Mamoun Nukumanu

Earth Resonance is a living installation that creates a space for the convergence of plant and human minds. The artist invites the public to interact and play their dreams of symbiotic futures into the roots of young trees using the central moon guitar, vibrating within the earth to create a link across the phylogenetic tree, a diagram that shows the evolutionary relationships among species. This multifaceted work explores the merging of human and plant time through a vibratory dance of elements—sun, wind, hands, leaves, sound, and mind. Living willow branches, gathered from across New York, are guided along a bamboo scaffold to form a toroidal field of crystallized sunlight. As the seasons change, Earth Resonance serves as a nursery for spontaneous urban trees brought in by wind and birds. The plants in the nursery ring will eventually be donated and planted around the bioregion, carrying with them the memories of time as a sculpture. In the artist’s words: “As an emergent ecology, Earth Resonance is conscious and functions as a body, with subterranean messages passing beneath and through our feet. What song of healing would you play into the body of the earth so that it may be written in cells?” With this question in mind, tune your intention to the life-giving harmonies spoken and heard by these plants. Listen and sing.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Mamoun Nukumanu (he/him) is a Brooklyn based interdisciplinary artist that guides living trees in temporal dances. Born on Long Island, Nukumanu’s work explores the semiotic entanglement of ecology, mind and body to create doorways to other worlds. Deeply passionate about ecological regeneration, he imagines the growth of symbiotic futures through the reforestation of the earth and the reestablishment of the ecology commons through the collective cultivation of living tree cities. Nukumanu graduated from NYU Gallatin in 2019 and proceeded to work at Terreform ONE in Brooklyn for five years on the design of a living tree house prototype. He plants his tree sculptures in convergence with the will of fate, with work currently growing across the world, including New York, Amsterdam, Puerto Rico, and Portugal.