Heartwood

Gallatin Galleries, New York, Oct. 30-Nov. 26, 2024

Trees are vital elements of our immune systems, climate systems, knowledge systems, support systems, and circulatory systems. And, like us, they are increasingly vulnerable to the fossil fuel and chemical-intensive systems we live within. In Heartwood, Weinberg explores these multidimensional relationships between humans and trees. Her weavings and sculptures connect the harms extraction inflicts on us both: from rising temperatures and plastic proliferation to species loss and illness. Silhouettes of endangered tree species are suspended as shrouds woven from plastic and plant fibers in forms that resemble lungs, arteries, and roots. Tourniquets—once intended to slow bleeding, now expired petrochemical-derived waste—are coiled into tree rings. Snaking vines of petrochemical-derived medical tubes are bound with hand-dyed threads color-coding climate data that materialize perilously rising temperatures. New York Times magazines are shredded, spun, and woven into tactile color fields to metabolize the climate and health crises featured in their pages. Through the systems and structures of weaving, together, these works retrace and reimagine frayed relationships between corporeal and ecological bodies. In a time of acute loss and fragmentation, Weinberg looks to trees’ heartwood—their dead but strong inner cores—as embodiments of how grief has the potential to hold us up as we work towards a reimagined future.