Evian bottles, plastic packaging, grass, flower petals, metal chains, laundry detergent and phone chargers; Renna scavenges his immediate surroundings and fashions ephemeral facial decorations out of anything and everything he can get his hands on. “I intuitively believe that I am able to ‘see through’ objects of any kind and consider their aesthetic potential, no matter their original value or purpose,” he says.

Combining and subverting the visual connotations of retrofuturism, Afrofuturism, cyberpunk, steampunk, tribalism, and mythology, Renna’s creations fuse nature and modernity instead of posing them as antithetical notions. “I feel like nature and technology have an absolutely similar way of working,” he affirms, citing the process of photosynthesis as “the highest-end technologic device.”

Upgrading trash to facial compositions, Renna’s work is a device for a visual narrative that revolves around the post-human life in the city of Fondatia, where residents worship water, feed off laboratory-made micronutrient pills and look out from 3D, pixelated windows. “Fondatia is a utopia… at least for me,” he says. “Does that change the whole meaning of a utopia? Maybe. I need one to survive though… Fondatia is my utopia.”