TIFFANY SHLAIN

From the story of Adam and Eve to the Bodhi Tree in Buddhism, trees have long been associated with enlightenment. In the Tree of Knowledge, the artists inscribe a 10,000-pound salvaged eucalyptus with nearly 200 historical and contemporary questions that have spurred humanity’s ongoing quest to understand the world, like Do we have free will?”, “Can machines be intelligent?” and “What’s the meaning of life?” Depicting time not as linear but rather as a series of beginnings and endings—as well as incorporating geological notions of deep time—the work invites visitors to consider the immensity of existence and to conceive of themselves in relation to nature and temporality in new and thought-provoking ways.