BROOKLYN, NY.- Hailed by Sculpture Magazine as Editor’s Choice, The Remains of Winter, a series of sculptures made especially for The Green-Wood Cemetery by Athena LaTocha, has been extended into the new year. The exhibition, which is free and open to the public daily, will be on view in the Historic Chapel until January 22nd, 2023 and on Battle Hill until September 2023.

LaTocha was inspired by the Cemetery as a site for memory and mourning that is also an oasis with an abundant collection of mature trees, thriving wildlife populations, and steeped in geological history. The three sculptures are made from trees at Green-Wood that are cloaked in sheets of lead, a material historically used in coffins to slow decomposition, in an allusion to the natural decay of all things. The trees themselves were slated for removal by the Cemetery’s horticulture department because of age, damage, or disease. For the portion of the installation that is inside the Historic Chapel, an entire thirty-foot black locust is laid to rest, with its canopy and root system intact.

Through The Remains of Winter, LaTocha considers how we might grieve for the natural environment (now commonly referred to as ecological grief) and our place within the larger world as we witness the cataclysmic impact of climate change. Her use of lead illustrates one way we might conceive of memorializing the shifts and changes that are unfolding both on a geological and human scale.

“Green-Wood was an invitation I couldn’t turn down,” said LaTocha, whose work regularly incorporates natural materials like bark, soil, and sand. “To be in a place steeped in history, that goes back to when Brooklyn was the hinterlands, allows me to look at the various overlays of history and how they influence our thinking about place and time. Green-Wood allows us to look at the shaping of places by natural forces as well as the roles humans have had in shaping those places. The same space now also memorializes and honors the dead. So, the setting fosters profound questions about the passing of time and the concepts of permanence and change.”




Having grown up in Alaska, where the rugged natural terrain was so dramatically impacted by the oil and gas industries, LaTocha has continually been drawn to the natural world. She has created art from environments across the continent, from the deserts and mountains of the southwest to the great plains, and now from the landscape of The Green-Wood Cemetery. This is LaTocha’s first outdoor installation.

“Athena's awe-inspiring work provokes contemplation about the impermanence of all living things,” said Harry Weil, Green-Wood’s director of public programs and special projects. “Felled trees are turned into mulch for new plantings, the ground is dug and refilled for new interments, stone monuments slowly age; the Cemetery itself is in a continuous cycle of transformation.”

LaTocha’s previous work has been met with critical acclaim, with The New York Times writing that she “now operates in a vein all her own”. While this is LaTocha’s first installation at Green-Wood, she has exhibited locally at BRIC House, The Visual Arts Center of New Jersey, MoMA PS1, Fridman Gallery, JDJ at The Ice House in Garrison, New York, as well as across the country at the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas; IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts in Santa Fe, South Dakota State Museum, Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art in Indianapolis, and The Heritage Center at Red Cloud Indian School in Pine Ridge, South Dakota. LaTocha splits her time between Peekskill, NY and New York City.

Hailed as a must-see in the New York art scene this October, Hyperallergic called The Remains of Winter a “poetic allusion to death and decay.” Epicenter NYC identified LaTocha as a featured artist of the week, citing this work’s ability to “consider the ways we might mourn and memorialize these shifts and changes, and points to larger conversations about ecological grief and the cataclysmic impact of climate change.”

The Remains of Winter is made possible by a generous grant from The National Endowment for the Arts.