Garaža Kamba

On Trees and Forests is a spatial installation created as part of a research project on storytelling ecology, exploring ways of thinking about nature, its narratives, and possible futures imagined outside the capitalist framework. During 2019 and 2020, I visited a clearing in a forest on Žumberak every few months.
I documented it and reflected on it. The clearing emerged from logging in a part of the forest near a dirt road wide enough for trucks transporting timber. The forest predominantly consists of beech, oak, and hornbeam trees, species capable of living for centuries. It is partially owned by residents of nearby villages, whose population is predominantly elderly and sparse. The trees surrounding the clearing carry within their bodies the potential for many more years of life than I hold in mine, which, based on the average life expectancy of a Croatian woman, is expected to be 79 years. On the stumps in the clearing, I found fragments of wood that had broken off during felling—remnants at the point of breakage. Oak and beech are particularly high-quality woods, serving as a significant source of income for some forest owners. Other types of wood are used for heating. The fragments reminded me of shapes of continents, supercontinents, and fictional (or lost) landmasses. I embroidered these shapes onto fabric. The fragments were collected and manually sanded. While counting the growth rings, I found a piece as old as I am. Maintaining the forest involves removing old and diseased trees and planting new ones, a labor-intensive and time-consuming process.
If trees are removed for industrial purposes, efforts are made to avoid excessive logging so the forest is not significantly diminished. The forest containing the clearing is maintained sporadically. The clearing is small, but I noticed a few new ones nearby. The forest has paths, though many are overgrown. Visitors are free to touch the fragments and rearrange the constellations of continents.

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