At the National Mall, Artist Tiffany Shlain Is Rewriting Women into U.S. History
(the events can be read at the link below--absolutely fascinating)
At the National Mall, Artist Tiffany Shlain Is Rewriting Women into U.S. History
9/12/2023 by Bonnie Stabile
On display from Nov. 1-4 in Washington, D.C., Tiffany Shlain’s Dendrofemonology remakes the historical tree ring into a timeline of the story of women and power in society.
Tiffany Shlain’s Dendrofemonology, presented by the National Women’s History Museum and Women Connect4Good, remakes the historical tree ring into a timeline of the story of women and power in society. (Courtesy of the National Women’s History Museum)
The architecture of Washington, D.C., was self-consciously designed to evoke power, permanence and ancient Greek and Roman ideals of democracy and liberty, as espoused by the Founding Fathers. However, with erosion threatening architectural and human rights landmarks, artist and activist Tiffany Shlain says it is time to imagine a new national monument. Sponsored by the National Women’s History Museum and Women Connect4Good, she has undertaken such a project.
Shlain, a veteran commentator on the modern human condition, is orchestrating a moveable monument on the national mall: a tree ring roughly five feet in diameter, with text burned into the wood showing a timeline of the story of women and power in society.
Her ambitious take on the historical tree rings was inspired by her childhood visits to national parks. This ring begins by noting that goddesses were worshipped in 50,000 BCE. It ends with the outermost ring demarcating the 2022 overturning of Roe v. Wade as “eviscerating federal protection of reproductive rights in the U.S.” (See a full list of the tree ring’s milestones at the end of this article.)
Shlain’s feminist history tree ring is named Dendrofemonology, a play on the term dendrochronology—the science of “dating events in former periods by the comparative study of growth rings in trees.” It offers an intentional counternarrative to more typical patriarchal fare—such as narratives that credit colonialist Christopher Columbus for setting sail in 1492, as the Cross-Section of Time landmark does at Muir Woods National Monument, an example of what Shlain calls “mansplained history.” The feminist history tree ring will be on display from Nov. 1-4, 2023, between the Washington Monument and the imposing Capitol building. Unlike the stone structures that will tower over it on all sides, the tree ring is evocative of a once-living thing, majestic in its own right, that has witnessed history and aspires to be a part of correcting its oversights and injustices.
“I literally was finishing it as the Dobbs decision happened,” said Shlain of the project. The Dobbs ruling “felt like a punch to the soul”—the same one she experienced in 2016 when she “thought we were going to get our first woman president.” After the 2016 election, she again turned to art as activism, creating a global event about gender equity called 50/50 Day in 2017, which featured a 20-minute film, “50/50: Rethinking the Past, Present and Future of Women + Power.” As rights for underrepresented groups, never fully realized, are being threatened by a deluge of legal setbacks, Dendrofemonology offers itself as a bullseye for collective action. The concentric circles in its chronology point to eroding status and reproductive rights for women, mortally threatening their health and autonomy.
“We need a visual, and we need a coming together,” said Shlain of her motivation for the project, with the taglines #ReclaimOurHistory and #VoteOurFuture.
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https://msmagazine.com/2023/09/12/women-history-usa-tree-ring-washington-dc-tiffany-shlain/