Artist Tiffany Shlain announces A mobilization for women’s rights and the planet, a public Art Activation in New York City on September 21, 2024.

Timed to the Artist’s Solo Exhibition You are here at Nancy Hoffman Gallery in NYC and Ancient wisdom for a future ecology: trees, time, and technology for the Getty PST Art exhibition at the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles.

On September 21, 2024, the artist, filmmaker, and author Tiffany Shlain will co-host A mobilization for women’s rights and the planet, an inspiring art activation, walk, and convening in New York City to gather leading voices in women’s rights, climate activism and voter mobilization in partnership with Women Connect4Good, Project Dandelion, the ERA Coalition, Planned Parenthood, Women's Earth and Climate Action Network, and more. The mobilization will be grounded by the installation of Shlain’s sculpture and movable monument Dendrofemonology: a feminist history tree ring at Madison Square Park. The day-long activation is open to the public and will serve as a galvanization for gender equality and environmental justice, convening just in time to kick off Climate Week in New York.

“My work continues to look at the interdependence of women’s history, ecology and the future”, states Shlain. “In a year when democracy is at stake, we will bring together art and action featuring dynamic voices across generations, creating opportunities to amplify a nonpartisan movement to insist on equal rights and protecting our planet”.

A mobilization for women’s rights and the planet activation also punctuates bicoastal exhibitions by Shlain, with a solo exhibition You Are Here at Nancy Hoffman Gallery (September 5 - October 19, 2024) and a joint exhibition with her partner in life, artist and roboticist Ken Goldberg, Ancient wisdom for a future ecology: trees, time, and technology, that is part of the Getty’s PST Art: Art & Science Collide initiative at the Skirball Cultural Center (October 17, 2024 - March 2, 2025).

A mobilization for women’s rights and the planet

On September 21, A mobilization for women’s rights and the planet will kick off with a public installation of Shlain’s acclaimed sculpture, Dendrofemonology: A Feminist History Tree Ring, at Madison Square Park in New York City. A moveable monument, the work is a 65-inch reclaimed deodar cedar wood sculpture that offers a timeline of humanity through a feminist lens, mapped against the concept of trees bearing witness to history, as a new kind of feminist monument for the 21st century that by its very nature, being made from wood and not granite, will change and evolve. The sculpture explores an important narrative about where we started as a feminist culture, how far we've come, and how far we still have left to go. The timeline starts 50,000 years ago, with text burned onto the tree ring documenting how society has gone from women having power in society with more ancient civilizations worshiping goddesses, to patriarchy spreading, to women securing the right to vote, to the overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2022. The last entry on the timeline is Today:' serving as both an invitation to take action and a reminder that what we do today will influence what’s recorded next.

Anchored by the public installation of Dendrofemonology, there will be a program of speakers and performances celebrating and galvanizing women’s rights, feminist leadership, climate activism, and election mobilization featuring a speaking program and a performance by the cast of the Tony-award-winning play Suffs the Musical. The morning’s program will be followed by A Walk for Women’s Rights and the Planet!, with everyone wearing white, honoring women’s suffrage movement, and proceeding via the High Line Park, in an organized processional. The parade will conclude at Nancy Hoffman Gallery, where Shlain will screen her new short documentary on Dendrofemenology and lead a special tour of her exhibition.

The event builds off of the powerful installation of Dendrofemonology, A Feminist History Tree Ring on the National Mall in Washington D.C. last fall, a multi-day activation that included participation by Vice President Kamala Harris, Wonder Woman’s Lynda Carter, #MeToo founder Tarana Burke, activist Dolores Huerta and TV host Padma Lakshmi. Previous installation locations include San Francisco’s iconic Ferry Building, and women’s conferences in Los Angeles and New Haven. Through its multiple installations, this movable monument embodies a philosophy of adaptability, community and universality that aims to inspire, educate, and galvanize our continued fight for gender equality while memorializing the push and pull of women’s progress.

Nancy Hoffman Gallery: You are here (September 5 - October 19, 2024)

For her debut solo exhibition at Nancy Hoffman Gallery, Shlain will present new work of supergraphics, sculptures, large-scale lightboxes, photographs, time-based media and a selection of previous works that emphasize how being immersed in nature can change our perspective and sense of scale, illuminating our place and context within both space and time.

Shlain takes inspiration from large-scale tree rings timelines that are often at the entrance of national parks and especially one where she grew up in Northern California in Muir Woods. Whereas most tree ring histories are patriarchal and colonialist, Shlain reimagines what alternate histories the trees have borne witness to, like a feminist history in Dendrofemonology, or the brevity of one’s life within the larger context of time. In the You are here large scale 16 feet wide, 12 feet tall supergraphic, three lines Yare here, you will be here, you will not be here encourage viewers to recognize the preciousness and brevity of their life.

In A female gaze into history, Shlain projects an experimental film onto a tree ring to further explore this idea of trees bearing witness to history.

In her new documentary, Dendrofemonology, that will debut at the exhibition, Shlain illustrates her creative process and shares her motivations for making the moveable monument to bring feminist history to the public. The film features interviews with trailblazers who are included on the tree ring like Dolores Huerta, Lynda Carter, #Metoo Founder Tarana Burke, as well as interviews with the public during its installation on the National Mall on what milestones they hope to see next. With each progressive installation of the work, Shlain continues to contextualize the present moment within a greater understanding of feminist and natural history and inspire visitors to expand their vision of possibilities for the future: imagining a woman elected president of the United States, the Equal Rights Amendment finally passed by Congress, and reproductive rights ensured for all under the Constitution.

Getty’s PST Art: art and science collide. Ancient wisdom for a future ecology: trees, time and technology (October 17, 2024-March 2, 2025)

Shlain’s fall slate of exhibitions and activations is punctuated by the Los Angeles exhibition Ancient wisdom for a future ecology: trees, time, and technology, which is part of Getty’s PST Art: art and science collide initiative at the Skirball Cultural Center. For the exhibition, Shlain collaborates with her husband Ken Golberg—an artist, roboticist, and scientist—to create large-scale tree ring sculptures, and time-based media and interactive piece using AI, all of which explore themes of the pursuit of knowledge, artificial intelligence, ancient wisdom and how we transmit ideas that harmonize the artists’ academic acumen and artistic impulses. In each work, the duo, known for careers involving both being engaged with and commenting on technology, meditate on different facets of a tree's anatomy, physiology, and symbology in order to illustrate complex systems of knowledge, philosophy, physics, and science. They invite us to consider the tree as a primeval interpreter, transmitter, and arbiter of information, emphasizing the symbiosis required for nature to survive and technology to advance.

Shlain fuses artistic and scientific vocabularies to explore notions of context, perspective, and time as they relate to ecology, spirituality, and social justice. Like the mathematical principle of fractals—patterns in nature that recur from the microscopic to the macroscopic scale—Shlain’s cross-disciplinary practice examines the interdependence of, and resemblance between, the human experience and the natural world—soulful theories of relativity that place her audience at the nexus of what came before and what could be.

Tiffany Shlain an interdisciplinary artist, activist, Emmy-nominated filmmaker, national bestselling author, and the founder of the Webby Awards. Shlain's work explores the intersection of feminism, philosophy, technology, neuroscience, and nature and has been shown at The Museum of Modern Art, the de Young Museum of Fine Art, The Sundance Film Festival and Embassies globally. Her awards and distinctions include selection by the Albert Einstein Foundation for their Genius100 list, the Neil Postman Award for Career Achievement in Intellectual Activity, and inclusion on NPR’s list of best commencement speeches.

Shlain has had multiple premieres at the Sundance Film Festival, including her acclaimed 2003 documentaries on reproductive rights Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness; and interdependence, with Connected (2011). Her book, 24/6: giving up screens one day a week to get more time, creativity, and connection, received the Marshall McLuhan Outstanding Book Award and her latest documentary on neuroscience, The teen brain, was executive produced by Goldie Hawn. She has been writing a monthly newsletter Breakfast @ Tiffany's for over twenty-seven years.