[Tne] “Ghost Forest,” like Lin’s Vietnam Veterans Memorial, is also a work of decolonization1— actively seeking out what has been lost in the ravages of colonialism and acknowledging the trauma that remains in order to heal and find pathways forward. It’s significant that Lin has referred to her memorials as “antimonuments,” which aren’t “about the past for the sake of the past.” “Ghost Forest” itself is surrounded by monuments to United States expansionism — from the eponymous James Madison who facilitated the Louisiana Purchase in 1803 and set the precedent for Andrew Jackson’s “Indian removals”; to the statue of William Henry Seward who brokered the illegitimate cession of Inuit, Athabascan, Yupik, Unangan, and Tlingit lands in 1867.

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• 1. Maya Lin’s installation “Ghost Forest” (2021) in Manhattan’s Madison Square Park opened to the public on May 10. I set out to view the work on opening weekend, and it seemed I wasn’t the only one eager to emerge from where I’d been cocooning for the past 14 months of the pandemic. The park was crowded with picnickers underneath the trees — the living Chinese elms and Lin’s “forest” of 49 dead Atlantic white cedars. Accompanied by a soundscape of recordings of animals commonly found more than 500 years ago on Manahahtaan island, the work vivifies scientific data to draw public attention to habitats and species that are disappearing primarily because of disruptive human activities.