Marin-based artist Tiffany Shlain defies categorization.
Emmy-nominated filmmaker, best-selling author, Albert Einstein Genius, founder of the Webby Awards—according to Newsweek, she’s one of the “women shaping the 21st century.”
And with the collision of her solo exhibition You Are Here at a New York gallery; the appearance of her sculpture Dendrofemonology at a Climate Week mobilization for women’s and environmental rights in Madison Square Park; and the opening of her most recent collaboration with husband Ken Goldberg, Ancient Wisdom for a Future Ecology: Trees, Time & Technology, at the Skirball Cultural Center in L.A., this behatted blonde goddess of multidimensional creativity has never wielded more influence.
“So many things have led to this moment,” says Shlain. A filmmaker since her student days at Berkeley—an academic path she pioneered at the university, which had no film production program at the time—she only officially crossed the bridge into the art world in 2020.
Her cutting-edge, live-spoken cinema performance Dear Human debuted at New York’s MoMA just a month before the pandemic stole the show. But back in the Bay Area with time and social distancing on her hands, Shlain began to roam Mount Tam and Muir Woods the way she did growing up. The landscape was the tinder that ignited her next chapter, the one playing out now across the U.S.
“Being in nature changes your sense of scale or perspective,” Shlain explains.'
'You Are Here,' Shlain's solo exhibition at NYC's Nancy Hoffman Gallery, on view through October 19th.(Courtesy of Tiffany Shlain)
“I grew up with tree ring history but it was always so patriarchal and didn’t really speak to me,” Shlain explains. Returning to spend time in nature she realized, “I needed to make a feminist history tree ring.”
The six-foot diameter cross section of a reclaimed deodar cedar became Dendrofemoology, a historical timeline exposing the interminable push-and-pull of women’s influence and subordination measured in the rings of the tree. In November 2023, the work was installed on Washington D.C.’s National Mall, a temporary monument to feminism and a call to women’s political action just beyond the reach of the Washington Monument’s long, phallic shadow.
“I go back 50,000 years in history, but towards the end 2020, the U.S. elects Kamala, then in 2022, Roe v. Wade was eviscerated, while globally 65 countries have legalized abortion and . 86 women have been elected as leaders,” says Shlain.
Last fall, when the 2024 political match-up between Trump and Biden seemed inevitable, the erection of Dendrofemonology was an urgent call for women to stand against the patriarchy. This fall, the urgency has only grown.
“Definitely things have shifted in the right direction, but we have to keep the momentum going and pushing for the world we want,” Shlain continues. With a woman on the presidential ticket, the tree rings’ appearance at Madison Square Park this month is a call to mobilize for women’s rights and the planet. “It’s a real get-out-the-vote event,” she says.
Tiffany Shlain's 'Perspective', on display now at the Nancy Hoffman Gallery in New York.(Courtesy of Tiffany Shlain)
Shlain’s simultaneous solo exhibition at Manhattan’s Nancy Hoffman Gallery, which runs through October 19th, builds on the evolution of perspective evoked by Dendrofemonology. Some works, like We Are Here, in which the words “war” and “peace” are repeated over and over in direct confrontation to the world’s never ending cycle of violence, hinge on the cross sections of trees. Others, like Perspective, are miniature sculptures hung beside larger-than-life portraits that reorder the relationship between humanity and nature. Light boxes and one piece, A Female Gaze Into History, in which images are projected onto a tree ring, draw from her filmmaking background.
In Ancient Wisdom for a Future Ecology: Trees, Time & Technology,opening in Octoberin Los Angeles, Shlain and her husband, a Berkeley robotics and automation professor/artist, expand on the ideas she explores in You Are Here.
“Ken and I, where we really connect, we love talking about the pros and cons of technology,” says Shlain. “If you go back really far into history, there’s so much hysteria that AI is going to destroy humanity, but we don’t believe that. The more people that understand, the more we can use it for good and not bad. We play with those disparities, that tension, in the artwork.”
While Shlain’s multi-pronged moment is a testament to her national reach, the Bay Area won’t be completely left out of the excitement. On October 8th, she’ll appear at the Belvedere Tiburon Library for a fireside chat about her award-winning book, 24/6: Giving up Screens One Day a Week to Get More Time, Creativity, and Connection—plusart and films, including the recent Goldie Hawn–produced The Teen Brain.
She’ll also give artist talks at the Erica Tanov Studio in Berkeley on October 10th, and the Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco on December 8th.
“I love the intellectual curiosity of the Bay Area, I love having my home base here,” says Shlain. It’s fair to say the adoration is mutual.
// Find more information on Shlain’s work and RSVP for her upcoming Bay Area talks at tiffanyshlain.com.
Tiffany Shlain and Ken Goldberg with one of the pieces in the upcoming Ancient Wisdom for a Future Ecology at the Skirball Cultural Center in LA.(Courtesy of Tiffany Shlain)
