GHOST TREE Installation & Performance
Tlatoani
2025
Cotton gauze, burlap, feathers, learning, wool yarn, thread, light, time, ritual, stone beads, marigolds, needles
120 × 40 × 40 in
‘Tlatoani’ is an installation by Meghan DeRoma honoring the Ahuehuete tree, or Montezuma Cypress (as it is known in the modern Western world), that has been named ‘El Árbol de la Noche Victorioso’. This tree was over 500 years old and held historical and cultural significance when it was burned down in the 1960s. This tree is an intrinsic part of the history of the land where its stump now sits, the land of the Mexica and now the land that holds La Ciudad de México. The death of this tree occurred because of human influence, adjacency, and infringement. It was not only a loss of ancient wisdom, but the loss of a keeper of time and a guardian of the land, and the death of an ecosystem of plants and animals and insects and arachnids.
Tlatoani is a word in Nahuatl that means ‘the one who speaks’, and was the term applied to the ruler of the time. Montezuma was a tlatoani. In this naming of this work, the voice of this being is exalted to the highest position in the human hierarchy. As humans on a planet in pain, developing the sensitivity to listen to the trees is right and pertinent in our survival as a species.
This work is part of an ongoing series concerning urban ecology called ‘Ghost Trees’ or, en Español, ‘Árboles Fantasmas’ that are monuments honoring tree beings that have passed away by the hand of or proximity to man. These ghostlike visages of the tree that once stood bear details of the ecosystem of beings that inhabited the tree when it was alive. The hope is that by honoring a tree as we would a relative, we will begin to see the trees as our kin, and protect them as we would our own.
Ghost Tree I
2025
Foraged urban Sycamore stump, noticing, cotton gauze, silk, wool yarn, thread, light, quartz crystals, time, ritual, stone beads, moss, needles, community members
120 x 24 × 24 in
Ghost Tree I is an installation and ambient performance piece. It is an honoring of a felled sycamore tree that was cut down to make room for an apartment in Venice, CA. A visage of the original tree is ceremonially reconstructed in a burial gown, embroidered with creatures from the ecosystem that once inhabited the tree. In the performance, community members sit and sew the burial gown slowly, meditatively, to the stump.
Ghost Tree II
2024
Foraged Urban Eucalyptus and Olive stumps, noticing, cotton gauze, silk, wool yarn, thread, light, time, ritual, stones, needles, community members
120 × 48 × 48 in
Ghost Tree II is an installation and ambient performance piece. It is an honoring of a felled Eucalyptus tree and Olive Trees that were cut down in Los Angeles, CA. Visages of the original trees were ceremonially reconstructed in a burial gown. In the performance, community members sit and sew the burial gown slowly, meditatively, to the stump. The Eucalyptus and the Olivse are non-native species and were introduced to Southern California.