In Kinship with the Oak was commissioned by LA Commons as their ‘Creating Our Next LA’ contribution to WE RISE 2022, Los Angeles County’s month-long initiative supporting community health and healing through art, culture, and public space. Responding to the program’s call to imagine more just, equitable, and resilient futures, the installation transformed a portion of Grand Park into an immersive landscape installation centered on the coast live oak (Quercus agrifolia).

While Grand Park’s design celebrates the world’s floristic kingdoms as representatives of Los Angeles’s cultural diversity, In Kinship with the Oak rooted this global narrative in the ecology and histories of place by centering the Los Angeles Basin as the traditional, ancestral, and unceded homeland of the Tongva people.

The abundance of oaks intended to demonstrate the commitment it would take to make a truly resilient, healthy, and equitable Next LA—investment in large-scale green infrastructural solutions in all neighborhoods. Quercus spp., as native to the region and adaptable to hotter, drier futures, sequesters carbon, filters air, provides shade, reduces runoff from storm events, and supports a great diversity of more-than-human life as the base of a rich and varied food web. 

During the month, the installation provided a space to distribute seeds with medicinal and healing properties used by Native peoples of the region. At the end of the month, the trees were donated to organizations committed to repairing our lands and waters.