_other Nature – Marshland Tales

Mitzi and Warren Eisenberg Gallery
September 19, 2025–January 18, 2026

In the Mitzi and Warren Eisenberg Gallery, Cecile Chong’s upcoming installation, _other Nature – Marshland Tales, continues her exploration of the fraught relationship between humans and the environment. In this new iteration, Chong turns her attention to New Jersey’s wetlands, with a particular focus on cattails as both material and metaphor. Her research traces the ecological and cultural significance of these reed-like plants, which have long been integral to the region’s terrain.

In her multimedia installation, Cecile Chong explores the intricate relationship between people and the ecologies to which they belong. The room-dividing fences found throughout Chong’s _other Nature series symbolize systems of extraction and geopolitical border tensions. Flora peek through and around the fence, exemplifying nature’s resistance to manmade divisions, and infant-like sculptural figures, which the artist calls guaguas, illuminate the space, guiding viewers along various pathways.

In this latest iteration of _other Nature, Chong investigates New Jersey’s Mill Creek Marsh, focusing on Typha, a plant genus endearingly known as cattails. She traces the ecological and cultural significance of these marshland plants, which are a crucial part of the region’s terrain. The Lenape, the Indigenous people of what we now call New Jersey, consider cattails nonhuman partners that provide food, medicine, and material for weaving and insulation. Today, native and invasive cattail species continue to shape the wetlands, linking contemporary ecology with ancestral land practices.

Blending materials, historical research, and visual storytelling, _other Nature – Marshland Tales invites viewers to reconsider our radical kinship and interdependence with the environment.