Sinji Turner-Yamamoto. Hanging Garden | 2010 | dead and live white birches, soil, water, metal structure/support for broken trunk, water irrigation system, | deconsecrated 19th century Holy Cross Church (National Register of Historic Places), Cincinnati, Ohio
Sinji Turner-Yamamoto, studied in Kyoto and Bologna. Hanging Garden is part of on ongoing series (so far eleven), the Global Tree Project, with installations around the world that put trees into iconic spaces. His website is a cloud of poetic fluff about wisdom, life and meditation; the work is more interesting.
Arte Povera is a clear influence in this piece: the tree itself containing its own history in its structure, its surface form a tip of an iceberg of biomass. Here it is two trees, one living and one dead, meeting at the point they enter or emerge from the earth. A built mirror, both a small tragedy and a clever statement.
The deconsecrated 1889-1901 Holy Cross Church in Cincinnati? What a beautiful thing. An Irish immigrant church and an attached monastery, it suffered in the decline of the Catholic priesthood and closed in 1977.