The Substitute (2019)

In 2019, Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg created the artwork The Substitute following the death of the last northern white rhinoceros (Ceratotherium simum cottoni), who humans named Sudan. This species of rhino roamed the grasslands and savannah woodlands of countries in East and Central Africa since the early Pleistocene period (over 2.5 million years ago).

Ginsberg digitally resurrected the northern white rhino in a white room. The rhino begins its life as disparate pixels unaware of its surroundings but progressively learns his way around the enclosed space, gaining resolution and becoming fully formed.

‘We briefly mourned a subspecies that humans have hunted to extinction, while being comforted with the hope humans may bring it back. But why would humans protect a resurrected rhino more than its ancestors? Isolated from its kin and its natural habitat, would this new rhino be a “real” northern white, or would it just look like one?’—Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg