About
The Womantree is a large-scale art installation for Burning Man 2024. Created by artist and sculptor Valerie Mallory and illustrator and concept designer Mikell Haynes, the piece first premiered at Burning Man in 2014. Since then, it has been exhibited at events in Utah, Sacramento, and San Francisco.
For its 10-year anniversary, the piece will be a larger, grander version with its own garden and entry portal that will bring the story to full expression.
Check out our Facebook Page for project updates and news.
Philosophy
Womantree explores themes of unity, resilience, and intergenerational connection in the stories of women.
The stories are about birth, growing up, childbearing and dying. The stories tell about one's mother, and mothers' mother. The tree reflects the wisdom, nurturing, and care of countless generations of women with the burdens and miseries they bore. The tales of the tree are poignant and wondrous, yet full of terrors as well.
As the tree grows, it twists, sprouts, drops roots while part of it simultaneously dies. It pushes through rocks to find grounding and aims doggedly toward sunlight. Clearly, this is the struggle of all living things. This reflects a broader connection to all ecology and life.
“One must grow where one's planted.” Through Womantree, we see a reflection of our own process of being in this world.
Figures of Womanhood
The figures that inhabit Womantree evoke the varied experiences of womanhood throughout the cycle of life. Some are curious and full of wonder. Some are weathered and wise. Some reach out for help. Others embrace and hold each other up.
The interplay of figures tell their own stories. The asymmetric, organic growth of the tree parallels the crooked journey through life, birth, growth and death.
Thanks for your support
Womantree was designed and created by Valerie Mallory Art for
Burning Man 2024, with support from a Burning Man Honorarium Art Grant. We're deeply grateful to the dedicated crew of builders,
volunteers, and financial donors who helped make this happen.
Thank you so much!
We've brought large-scale art installations to Burning Man every
year since 2014. Please swing by our studio site to learn more
about our work and see what we're up to now.