Deepen your appreciation for trees through the work of artist and data journalist Mona Chalabi. This site-specific installation explores environmental justice and climate change, exposing their unequal impacts on Brooklyn communities. In a time of pandemic and rising temperatures, The Gray-Green Divide asks which neighborhoods lack vegetation—and at what cost.

In playful drawings and data-driven visualizations, Mona, as she prefers to be called, investigates why trees matter. Not only do trees create shade and shelter, reduce energy needs, and remove air pollution, but access to trees also affects physical and mental wellness. When many New Yorkers were confined to their homes due to COVID-19, extreme heat and unequal proximity to cool green space became, and remain, heightened public health issues.

Find drawings of New York City’s one hundred most common trees, based on data from NYC Parks, on our front steps. By illustrating each tree and its leaves, Mona invites us to admire the surrounding greenery. On the adjacent wall, maps of Brooklyn show average temperatures and tree locations. A chart reveals how tree density corresponds with neighborhood wealth. Together these works tell hard truths about the inequities of our borough’s green spaces, laying bare the links among incomes, trees, and heat.