The Tree and I: A Chat With Artist Nicolás Dumit Estévez Raful Espejo

Artist Nicolás Dumit Estévez Raful Espejo talks about his contemplative walk through the park with scientist and tree expert John Butler and others.

When artist Nicolás Dumit Estévez Raful Espejo was a child, he spent a lot of time planting, playing with mud, and experimenting with flowers and stones. Later, after moving to the city, Estévez set these youthful passions aside, transforming into an artist who tackled topics like immigration and navigating being in two places. As an immigrant who arrived in New York City in 1994, these topics were close to the heart. Eventually, Estévez’s work moved out of curated gallery and art spaces and into the streets with a number of interventions, which took him from New York City to Mexico and Europe, where people encountered his work by accident, by design.

But, since 2007, Estévez has been working on making his projects more reflective and slower, and imbuing them with a more collaborative spirit. That same year, he moved to Barcelona to become a “local”, which led to a book of photographs — both collected and captured — during the project. And last fall, Estévez moved to Albion, Michigan (with support from Albion College) to meet people for dinner or to go on walks; to listen to what residents had to say about their lives there, which culminated in an exhibition with the city.

Estévez’s ability to make art out of cities and other spaces, and to do so somewhat outside of the art world, is what led him to develop “The Tree and I” for CALL/WALKS. A collaboration with Van Cortlandt Park Alliance ecological project manager John Butler, “The Tree and I” involved Estévez and Butler taking participants on a walking tour in Van Cortlandt Park, where they participated in an immersive, experiential tour of trees and Tibbetts Brook. It was there the two guided participants in creating a more intimate relationship with trees and water. Estévez’s WALK, designed to explore nature as part of CALL’s larger campaign to support the daylighting of Tibbetts Brook (a long buried Bronx stream), was another opportunity to explore the topic with a participatory audience. He and CALL are also making two downloadable versions of “The Tree and I” available — one for use as a self-guided walk at Van Cortlandt Park, the other to be used at any location with trees and water. (CALL is a member of the Coalition for Daylighting Tibbetts Brook, led by the Van Cortlandt Park Alliance and the Bronx Council for Environmental Quality.)

“What was an audience in the past has become collaborators, co-creators, and participants,” Estévez says of his work, including “The Tree and I”. “I knew right away that I was in good hands with John Butler, and that our love for the tree and water realms was mutual. John is someone I feel at ease talking about science as well as surmising about the secret lives of oaks and maples, and acknowledging the personhood of bodies of water, such as Tibbetts Brook.”

“Everybody is, for the most part, a co-creator in the ideas I present, and they help shape them. I see what I do now as being about life because there is no art without life. In that sense, it is the people outside of the art institution, and can often be more receptive to my ideas that can be intangible creative forms.”

Estévez has always had an interest in rivers and streams. When he first moved to New York City in 1994, he worked for the Bronx River Restoration Project. And in 2011, he underwent a baptism in the Bronx River to become a Bronx citizen. But it wasn’t until a 2012 trip to the United Kingdom, when he worked with artists Elizabeth Stephens and Annie Sprinkle on activities related to plants and water, that Estévez became interested in incorporating nature into his work.

“That was a big turning point for me, and I started to see things differently,” says Estévez. “From there, I went back to this place I was in as a child, where I had a really close relationship with nature.”

When Mary Miss (CALL founder and artistic director) invited Estévez to propose something for a CALL/WALK, his mind went immediately to trees.

“At that time, I was writing about trees from my childhood, so I think that was the genesis of the walk,” Estévez says. “I wanted to explore our relationship to these beings. My intention was to have people closer to trees in ways that are not common for most people. It was also to dispel any misconceptions we have of trees as these sort of static things that don’t move and therefore are kind of frozen instead of being alive and communicating with one another.”

Estévez’s concept of an arboreal language is not literal. Instead, he envisions a type of information system that operates through a tree’s roots, in which it can communicate to other trees and the surrounding environment. With “The Tree and I”, Estévez wanted to guide people in tapping into this communication network.

“I wanted to bring people closer to trees and invite them to befriend trees in ways they maybe hadn’t done before: to see them differently, to see their power, and experience their presence, which is something we don’t normally do,” says Estévez. “We usually just sit there under the tree and admire its shade and fruit. But I wanted people to really learn how to be in the presence of a tree, which is something that we have to work hard to develop”

“It’s this idea of seeing trees and relating to them,” he adds. “It’s about being with them for what they are, and presenting ourselves to them as we are and hopefully find a point of connection that we might have lost centuries ago.”

Though the walk’s focus was on trees, Estévez had Tibbetts Brook in mind when developing some meditative practices for the walks. These meditations involved slowing down, observing their surroundings, listening intently, and being fully present at their exact location.

“Tibbetts Brook was a central piece because of the daylighting, which I find fascinating,” says Estévez. “I didn’t know what daylighting was before I got involved with CALL. I looked it up on the internet and it’s really bringing back to the surface these bodies of water that had been buried underground because of urbanization. It’s about freeing them again and allowing them flow, although maybe not the same way as before.”

For “The Tree and I”, Estévez spoke about water as an essential part of who humans are as a species. He also led a meditation in which he invited people to think of the water that moves through their bodies, and then listen to the sound of Tibbetts Brook.

“The sound of the brook isn’t really intense but you can still hear it,” says Estévez. “I wanted them to imagine water going from their feet, up through their legs to their belly, neck, and head, and circulating throughout their body. I wanted them to imagine water flowing through their bodies and cleansing them, and that happened right by Tibbetts Brook.”

“I think we tend to think of bodies of water as just a river, a lake, a pond, or whatever it is,” he says. “But, I wanted to expand on that and propose the question of personhood in relation to these things.”

There is a clear symmetry to Estévez’s Bronx experiences, so often filtered through nature. Beyond the CALL/WALK and his earlier baptism in the Bronx River, Estévez also has a personal history with Van Cortlandt Park. Years ago, he taught art to children attending the Bronx River Restoration project, and regularly escorted them from the Fordham Road area to Van Cortlandt Park to swim in the pool and go on walks. In a sense, with “The Tree and I” it was as if Estévez had come full circle.

“I live on another side of the Bronx, closer to Manhattan, so it was interesting for me to be invited to do this at the park,” says Estévez. “It was like returning to a place that I had been before mentally, emotionally, and spiritually something like 26 years ago. All of those things came together in my mind, and here I am now relating to this place in a different way now — a deeper way, I would say.”

Likewise, Estévez believes that experiencing nature in a deeper way is vital. Wherever people might be, in a big city or a suburb, they can connect to plants and earth.

“Sometimes it’s harder, and it might entail planting something in a cup, planting something in a little pot in your house, and then communicating and communing with plants and earth this way, especially now that we’re living with this coronavirus,” Estévez says. “For people who are homebound and don’t have a lot of mobility, just looking out the window and connecting from afar is possible.”

“Find a way to bring earth to where you are. Plant something that connects you to the outer world and puts you in touch with the cosmos, even if you seem so small.”

Estévez is currently developing a larger workshop and curriculum, “Growing a Green Heart”, which CALL plans to produce in Spring 2021. On June 10th at 12:30pm EST, in collaboration with CALL, Estévez will also lead Pause and Hum, a live interactive online event with London-based urban beekeeper Dr. Luke Dixon. RSVP.

Click here to download “The Tree and I” to use as a self-guided walk. A full version includes the walk with John Buttler, to be used in Van Cortlandt Park, while a shorter version can be used in any location with a tree and a bit of water — even a puddle.