Paw Paw Study (2026) is a performance and sculptural installation by artist and ecologist Dylan Gauthier. The work centers on the charismatic yet widely unknown figure of the paw paw, the largest edible fruit indigenous to North America. Once popularized as the "poor man's banana" it has since receded from view, in part because its delicate fruit and short ripening season make it a hard fit for an industrialized and globalized food system. As one New York Times writer put it "If there were such a thing as an anticapitalist fruit, the pawpaw, commonly foraged in the wild and inherently resistant to commodification, might qualify." Street trees, both those officially stewarded by the city and designated in its online tree atlas, and those less formally planted and almost magically maintained by residents, do quiet ecological work, cooling pavement with shade, and holding carbon in the soil. Paw paw groves are shady and cool spaces, perfectly suited to New York City's subtropical humid climate zone. Gauthier treats the planting of a street paw paw as a performance of care, maintenance and reciprocity. To flourish, the tree must be convinced to take root in the ground of a street tree pit and neighbors must be convinced to help it survive its first fragile seasons.

During the Fallow Frames Biennial weekend, Gauthier will also distribute a small-edition Risograph zine that reveals a distributed grove of the trees across the city, inviting us to gather fruit and help tend the grove through slow years as we establish an urban forest that catches up with New York as a newly realized subtropical biome.