Monologue

Rooted in the Catskill Mountains, “Monologue” interweaves photography, collected community reflections, and personal interventions to explore the intimate, transformative dialogue between humans and trees.

Situated in the forests in the Catskill Mountains, “Monologue” was conceived from my desire to speak to the trees.  Its lifeline depends on the hope and obsession – one day I will hear back from the nature.

In 2020, the pandemic grounded my family and me in a cottage in the Catskills. I started to spend a lot of time in the woods, worked with and among the trees.  Assisted by photography, I collected the scenes in the forests.  They were the evidence of the conditions in the forests and the memories of my experiences.  Those two years are dominated by the presence of tree and their persistent transformations.  The immersive observation of changes both human-induced and natural along with a logger’s inquiry to harvest trees on our land, made me profoundly aware of the impactful interconnection between human and nature in an intimate distance.

In Catskill Mountains, forests and trees are both the very reality and metaphors for the physical, philosophical, political, social, and moral energies.  I wanted to converse with the trees, also with the people - my neighbors, long-term residents, farmers, and travelers — to understand their thoughts and imaginations about the trees in this region. I started to collect their thoughts and memories through conversation and the “Thoughts-Collecting Boxes” placed in public venues such as local libraries and community spaces.

“Monologue” evolved into a platform on which photographs, collected texts, and my own act of interventions intertwine.  It blurs the boundary between the documentation of the past and a projection of the future.  The simultaneous presence of reality and fiction in these works created dialogues that examine the narratives and perspectives, and the “given” and the “created”. 

“Monologue” is like a tree talking in the deep forest – quiet and solitary, yet capable of igniting dialogue even in its absence.