In conjunction with the inauguration of The Shadow by Esther Shalev-Gerz, we are excited to offer a tour of UBC’s tree collection, led by Egan Davis, Chief Educator at the UBC Botanical Garden. We will meet at The Shadow outside of The Nest for a thirty-minute tour of trees nearby.

In The Shadow, Esther Shalev-Gerz embeds a ghostly silhouette of a first-growth Douglas fir across the expanse of University Commons Plaza, which is situated on the traditional, ancestral and unceded territory of the Musqueam people. Pixelated through the use of differing shades of paving stones, The Shadow engages pedestrians through its varied texture and tone underfoot, yet does not reveal the entire form. As in the landscape, the totality of the tree can only be grasped from a distance: The Shadow requires a view from higher ground to be complete.

Photo: Trees at Nitobe Memorial Garden, provided by the UBC Botanical Garden, used under Creative Commons License BY-NC-SA 2.0