Newly on view on the High Line is artist Giulia Cenci’s new production titled “secondary forest”

Thu, Apr 25 - Mon, Mar 31  2025

High Line at 24th Street, New York City

The sculptural installation is composed of animal, human, and plant forms cast from aluminum, sprouting from a steel grid armature.

Newly on view on the High Line is Giulia Cenci’s new production titled secondary forest. The sculptural installation is composed of animal, human, and plant forms cast from aluminum, sprouting from a steel grid armature. Dismembered wolf heads sit atop bundles of branches that seemingly stand in for their bodies, and cast tree roots hover above the ground, as though they’ve just been pulled and unearthed. Masks of human faces, their eyes squeezed shut, peek between branches. Their visages appear throughout the work, upside down and sideways, as though they’ve been frozen in a tumbling motion. The work also features the limb of a tree girded with metal, seemingly wearing a human face.

This amalgamation of organic and industrial materials reflects the history of the Meatpacking District’s meat trade and the High Line’s role in that industry. Cenci also reflects on the blurred line between humans and all other forms of life. The work’s title, a term used in botany to describe a forest or woodland area that has regenerated through largely natural processes after human-caused disturbances, allows viewers to reconsider their own impact on and relationship to the cycle of life.

About Giulia Cenci

Giulia Cenci (b. 1988, Cortona, Italy) lives and works between Amsterdam, Netherlands, and Tuscany, Italy. Cenci has presented solo exhibitions at institutions internationally, including Centre d’art de Saint-Fons, Lyon, France (2023); Centro Cultural Recoleta, Buenos Aires, Argentina (2023); Museo Blanes, Montevideo, Uruguay (2022); MUDAM, Luxembourg, Luxembourg (2021); Museo Novecento, Firenze, Italy (2021); and Kunst Merano Arte, Merano, Italy (2019). Recent group exhibitions include Unruly Bodies, Goldsmiths CCA, London, UK (2023); Reaching for the stars, Palazzo Strozzi, Firenze, Italy (2023); Face to Face, MUDAM Luxembourg, Luxembourg (2022); Strange – Sandretto Re Rebaudengo Collection, Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporáneo, Sevilla, Spain (2022); and Shapeshifters, Malmö Konstmuseum, Malmö, Sweden (2020). She has participated in major international group exhibitions and biennials including The Milk of Dreams, the 59th Venice Biennale, Venice, Italy (2022); and Jeune création internationale, the 15th Lyon Biennale, Lyon, France (2019).