Lincoln Park and Garfield Park Conservatory in Chicago offer a verdant escape, but now visitors can find another kind of growth at the Jane Lombard Gallery. Artists Merryn Omotayo Alaka and Sam Frésquez have fashioned hair sculptures that hang like branches from the ceiling and sprawl across the floor, resembling a 'Kanekalon forest'.

Five sculptural species—Listening Roots, Hearing Bells, Mother & Child, Stacking Pearls and Umbra Pods—emerge, each with its own distinctive form. These pieces are inspired by epiphytes, non-parasitic plants that thrive on a host specimen.

The exhibition plays with the idea of interdependence, much like an epiphyte and its host tree. Works such as Stacking Pearls, which resemble feather dusters, showcase this intimate connection, while others reflect genetic inheritance through mirrored forms within vertical tendrils. The artists’ statement notes that these sculptures evoke systems of dependence and exchange.

Your Birth is My Birth runs until June 13th, giving visitors a chance to ponder the beauty and complexity of symbiotic relationships in an unexpected medium.