Famed artist Maya Lin unveils her new art exhibit, Ghost Forest, this week in Madison Square Park, according to The New Yorker.
This new installation from the designer behind the Vietnam War Memorial, the Civil Rights Memorial and Museum of Chinese in America warns the public of the dangers of climate change and rising seawater.
“Throughout the world, climate change is causing vast tracts of forested lands to die off,” Lin said in her artist’s statement, The Architect’s Newspaper reported. “They are being called ghost forests; they are being killed off by rising temperatures, extreme weather events that yield saltwater intrusion, forest fires, and insects whose populations are thriving in these warmer temperatures. I wanted to create something that would be intimately related to the Park itself, the trees, and the state of the earth.”
Hurricane Sandy felled the 49 white cedar trees in Ghost Forest. The leaves on the trees are now absent, giving the public an ominous feeling.
Lin invites the public to partake in different activities alongside the Ghost Forest exhibit.
Some of these activities include a soundscape of past animals from Manhattan which can be heard online and a tree and shrub planting campaign of some 1,000 plants. All of which are metaphors for the destruction of human activity.
The coronavirus pandemic pushed back Ghost Forest’s initial release date of June of last year. The exhibit closes on Nov. 14, 2021, a departure from Lin’s practice of installing permanent works, according to Vogue.
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