Nature always finds a way. From the adventurous plants that found a home on the High Line after the trains stopped running to the plants that recolonize landscapes destroyed by hurricanes, logging, or construction, nature’s resilience in the face of disturbance—particularly human disturbance—is unmatched. This phenomenon is alive, both in name and in subject matter, in Giulia Cenci’s new work for the High Line, secondary forest, which gives a nod to the term botanists use for a forest that pops up after a disturbance to the landscape, inviting viewers to question human’s relationship with nature.

Cecilia Alemani, the Donald R. Mullen, Jr. Director & Chief Curator of High Line Art, sat down with Cenci to dig into her artistic process—sourcing found objects, agricultural tools, old machinery, and car parts—and the dialogue she wishes to spark with secondary forest

Cecilia Alemani: Some of your past works like dead dance for the 2022 Venice Biennale have dealt with industrial food production, and you make your home on an old farm, with your studio in a former stable. How does your familiarity with and interest in farming—particularly of animals for food—and the meatpacking history of the High Line’s neighborhood inform or inspire your new work for the High Line?

Giulia Cenci: The idea of production through living beings, animals, and others—and the idea of the “manufacturing of life”—is often present in my research. I associate this type of production with a neverending assembly line, where living creatures are deprived of liberty and autonomy.

secondary forest touches on that topic, but also explores plants and agriculture and the possibility of re-thinking our idea of productivity from a different point of view. I seek to highlight the interconnection and interdependence between living beings. For instance, the role of human intervention in the breeding and growing of plants in the agricultural world is seen as critical to creating ”productive” plants, such as grapes and olive trees. These plants exist alongside those that are seemingly useless to the survival of our species—but how do we determine what is essential? Even though weeds are not directly related to our sustenance, they are essential to other organisms we depend on. Ivy, for example, deemed an unnecessary plant for humans, is a key food source for pollinating insects that are indispensable to us and our ecosystem at large.

The agricultural landscape surrounding where I live is also a big influence on my work. The land is extremely arid; it’s highly productive in the short term and extremely unproductive in the long run. Agricultural machinery can inflict damage on the land, and monoculture, with its herbicides, has serious consequences for the environment. The loss of soil fertility and biodiversity is extremely evident in the countryside of Tuscany where I have my studio, mostly due to the impact of intensive viticulture.

The parallel between this concept and the High Line became evident when I realized how the “unproductivity” of a disused railway—once used to transport animal products like meat and dairy—had been the catalyst for the resurgence of flora. Where we humans designed and then abandoned a man-made structure, nature sought to carve out a space for itself, and once again proved indispensable to our well-being.

Tell us the story behind the metal used in secondary forest and your other works. Where do you get the materials, and why is it important to you to recycle materials to create your artworks?

It all starts with a search for materials I can reclaim—real, obsolete objects like discarded agricultural machinery scraps. In secondary forest, these materials function as supports, alongside the tracks of the High Line, for the rest of the figures. I try not to sacrifice creativity in this choice, but it’s important to me to include materials that had a previous life. My reasons are not only ecological; they also lie in the foundations of past artistic movements and references, like ready-mades, for example. I always strive to create works that do not come from depleting raw materials. For this artwork, I also set up a small foundry built entirely by me and my assistants. We created a small wood-fired furnace that implements the bracketing technique of casting so we can use and recycle aluminum from car scraps, giving them a new shape. We reproduced grapevines collected from surrounding vineyards, olive, agave, laurel, and anatomical figures. The new forms of upcycled aluminum were then welded and connected to each other and the iron structure.

You seem very independent and hands-on in all aspects of your life and work, while also taking time to create communal spaces to share knowledge and resources. How has your definition of community changed over time? Why is it important to you to create community with intentionality?

The work environment that has spontaneously formed in recent years is something like a “bottega,” a workshop where a dimension of the work is that of “doing” and manual labor, but there’s also an exchange of suggestions, thoughts, and, most importantly, a certain approach in the way we respect the idea of production, including the sustainability of materials and recycling. Carrying out the entire production process personally allows me to follow every step of the work, but also allows me to create with the freedom to accept mistakes and be open to the potentiality in the process. The people helping me share this attitude, and often become friends in addition to partners at work. This openness to the experience of learning and the acceptance of the limits of my and our capabilities is a different approach to this type of making things, which does not resemble any other foundry. Together, we somehow find our way to do things, which creates a good dose of independence and yet also a sense of cooperation. We may be satisfied or disappointed by what we do or do not achieve, but we learn and grow together—our attitude does not include the idea of limits; it is an exercise of freedom.

The studio is also located in a remote area, and the people moving there to help can cultivate great relationships with others and have the opportunity to improve their own works as well. At the moment, after work, one of my assistants is making his own aluminum sculptures, without funding limitations. Other people who have met here are working together on other long-term projects. I’m incredibly thankful for this community. I’m not sure if I expressly tried to create this, but it is a huge gift to me and others.

A “secondary forest” is simply described as land that once had a significant disruption—like clear-cutting for timber or a hurricane—that has now regenerated through natural processes, with nature reclaiming its place, though likely not in the same form as it was originally. How did this concept inspire you, and how does that story of disruption and regeneration tie into the themes in your work?

When I thought about the history of the High Line, I associated it with the term of “secondary forest,” where nature regenerates itself following human-caused disturbance or equivalently disruptive natural phenomena. It reclaims its place by adapting to new environmental and territorial conditions. I also introduced the concept of woody necromass [editor’s note: necromass is defined as dead organic matter, often found in soil], which plays a fundamental role within forest ecosystems. Deadwood performs many ecological roles, such as providing habitat for numerous living organisms (thus supporting the preservation of biodiversity), contributing to soil development, and so on. I see secondary forests and necromass processes as a form of resilience. The forest’s ability to absorb the effects of changes and reorganize itself to sustain biodiversity and the entire natural ecosystem is what we, as human beings, should strive for, even if it seems to be contrary to our current economic system and its self-destructive tendencies.

In the artwork, a secondary forest is growing and creating a new entity, completely outside of any human-defined rule. I’m most interested in the idea of interdependence of beings linked to the concept of necromass—that’s why all the figures in secondary forest are connected and linked to something else, such as a structural component or another body. In the installation, plants, humans, and animals merge to sustain and regenerate themselves without any hierarchy, since hierarchy is a human-created concept that we apply to our way of living. Sleeping figures—almost abandoned on their sides like falling trees—are mixed with roots, flowers, and bones. Everything may look dead or alive—or maybe just sleeping, to eventually reveal itself in a new and peaceful season.

You have said before that you’re interested in creating interconnected habitats with your works, where there is interaction between the elements of the work, the setting, and the viewers. How do you feel about secondary forest being part of the High Line’s ever-changing gardens, among a diverse audience of visitors, and against the backdrop of New York City?

The ecosystem of the High Line itself led me to design secondary forest. I wanted to create something that interacted with the intrinsic and complex network of perspectives, concepts, and relationships that this place carries with it. The High Line is a suspended platform, a flourishing and self-organized landscape that people desperately need, situated above the tangled web of streets and intersections that form the cityscape. My intention was to let the work merge with the surrounding landscape. In fact, it is designed to incorporate itself into the vegetation of the High Line, making the gardens intrinsic to the work and an active part of it. The plants will reveal and obscure parts of the installation, depending on the season. Every detail was designed to be in continuous search of its own form or resting place, in an attempt to interact with the ever-changing vegetation.

I love the diversity of the public audience in the park. It was very interesting to see the reactions during the installation process, and I was quite surprised by the need by passersby to express an opinion. I guess this is related to the idea of being so public. People are extremely curious and they are able to interact with something they weren’t necessarily looking for.

Do you attempt to generate a dialogue with audiences of your work? How do you see the role of art in general in terms of sparking conversation and eliciting reactions in viewers? And more specifically, how do you hope viewers will respond to secondary forest?

I think of art as one of the most powerful ways to explore things around us, or even as a way for humans to grow, bloom, and express themselves as offspring of the earth. It is unlimited, anarchic, boundless, and has no rules—and when you break it, it is even better. I guess this extreme freedom makes it sometimes hard to understand a clear message behind it, but the opportunity for the viewer—to interact with a personal opinion or meaning, to be simply attracted or feel repulsed by it—is one of the most political and freeing experiences we can still get.

Most of the ways we use to communicate or express ourselves, like social media, are characterized by defined rules, grids, and limitations on how we should appear. Limited sentences, limited pixels, and defined profiles, where we need to describe our self and identity, barely being able to show our individuality. Art can really avoid all of that, and I hope the public will be capable of feeling something about themselves as they interact with the work.