The Icelandic artist Þórdís Alda Sigurðardóttir's multipart installation Talk to the young tree. Listen to the old tree, 2017, spans the second and third floors of the factory. At its heart are fragments of a knotty oak tree from the Hessian Nature Park in Germany. The rings of the tree date it to 1841. Having lived on the planet longer than any human alive today, the tree symbolizes the wisdom that comes with age. The visitor is invited to sit on circular stools created from cross sections of the tree in order to come close to the strength and solidity of the hardwood. Surrounding the seating is a small forest of truncated parts of slender trees from Iceland on which hang delicate handkerchiefs embroidered with words in Icelandic and English, such as "plant", "cultivate", and "chop", which invoke human interactions with trees. The words give voice to the old tree. Elsewhere, a sapling is planted in a confessional that extends from the second to the third floor, as if to imply that this shaft of space is what the tree will occupy as it takes its place in the world. The young tree can listen to your story. On the outer surface of the vertical room are photographs of twenty-one species of endangered trees - a document to what is lost and what is at stake.

One would never encounter old growth forests in this part of the world. Thus, the knotty oak is exotic, rare, and precious. Throughout her practice, the artist has often referenced the intersection of nature and culture, the ways in which humans have worked the land across seasons and over generations. Her works strike а balance at the nexus of the wild and the tamed.

Pari Stave 

Preparation