[FESTIVAL] Installation “How to Grow a Tree from a Branch?” made of dust-covered neckties and dry tree branches in nature.

[Mila2394]

“How to grow a tree from a branch?” is both a question from nature and a metaphor for sustainability. A branch, once cut, seems lifeless, yet with care it can take root and grow again. The same principle guides our search for sustainable futures: how to regenerate what appears lost, how to imagine continuity from fragments.

This installation brings together two discarded materials: fallen tree branches and worn neckties. Branches represent the cycles of growth and decay that shape ecosystems. Ties, once symbols of human identity and daily labor, have been left behind, covered with dust. Together, they form an image of regeneration. What might be waste in one context becomes meaningful in another.

Sustainability begins with re-imagining relationships to materials. A branch can be firewood, compost, or sculpture. A tie can be garbage, or it can be transformed into a rose or shadow. The act of re-use challenges linear habits of consumption and affirms a circular view of life, where endings are beginnings.

The ties hang from the branches like strange fruit, the last leaves of a passing season. Their shadows fall across the ground, reminders of presence and absence. In sustainability, absence matters: the forests cut down, the species that vanish, the rivers that dry. Yet absence can also inspire action. By making absence visible, the installation asks us to care for what remains, and to imagine how renewal might still be possible.

Dust is also part of the story. Covering the ties, it recalls the passage of time, the fragility of materials, and the inevitability of decay. But dust is not only an ending. It is soil in the making — the ground from which new life can emerge. Sustainability is not about purity or permanence, but about living with cycles of use, reuse, and transformation.

Branches cannot stand alone. They belong to trees, forests, and ecosystems. Likewise, sustainability cannot be achieved in isolation. It requires networks of care, collaboration, and imagination. The ties, once individual emblems of profession or role, now hang collectively, suggesting that our identities too must shift from individual gain toward shared responsibility.

Nature shows us resilience. After fire, green shoots return. After drought, rain brings new blossoms. After a branch is broken, a tree continues to grow. Sustainability is about learning from these patterns — trusting that fragments can become whole again. To grow a tree from a branch is to choose hope, even when conditions seem uncertain.

This work invites viewers to reflect on sustainability not only as a technical challenge but also as a cultural and emotional one. Numbers and policies matter, but so do imagination, memory, and care. Art can make sustainability tangible by giving waste new life, by showing beauty in what has been discarded, and by asking us to see possibility in fragments.

The question remains open: How do we grow a tree from a branch? The installation does not provide an answer but creates space for reflection. Perhaps sustainability is not about keeping everything exactly as it was, but about ensuring that life, in its many forms, can continue. It is about finding a future tree in a broken branch, a new purpose in a forgotten tie, and hope in what remains.

[Elisa]

Hi @Mila2394 😊, 

Thank you for sharing this beautiful story, I really appreciate your points.

Did you create this installation for a specific event?

I would love to know more about it. 😍

[Mila2394]

Roses of Ties is the project with Ukrainian refugees women. Glad you appreciated it! Read more at https://artten.se/roses-of-ties/

[Laurelle3]

@Mila2394 thank you for writing you have captured sustainability in your words. To me sustainability is in new life with what remains with recycle and reuse.