Second Nature: An Evening with Overstories
Wednesday 23rd September, 7-10pmWhat if caring for nature became Second Nature?
Art has a way of opening our eyes, reminding us of our place in the living world.
At Overstories, we play with the craft and ancient tradition of storytelling through art to reawaken an intimate, felt duty of care to the natural world we are part of.
This night is an invitation to feel it for yourself.
Wander through the work of artists, dancers, and storytellers who carry this connection in their craft, and share the room with fellow believers in a wilder, more connected world.
The Artists
Zaria Forman
Zaria Forman creates monumental pastel drawings of glaciers and oceans so lifelike they seem to breathe. She has flown with NASA over the polar regions, joined a National Geographic expedition to Antarctica and exhibited at Banksy’s Dismaland. Working with pigment and her fingertips, she captures landscapes already beginning to disappear. Her art is both a love letter to ice and a record of what we stand to lose.
Artist
Nick Brandt
Nick Brandt left a career directing Michael Jackson videos to photograph the vanishing wildlife of East Africa. His celebrated portraits give animals the dignity, mystery and emotional presence once reserved for kings. He also co-founded Big Life Foundation, whose Maasai rangers protect two million acres of wilderness. Brandt’s images are beautiful, haunting—and impossible to forget.
Photographer
Bradley Shelver
Artistic Director, Performer, Choreographer & Author
Johannesburg-born Bradley Shelver has danced with Ailey II, Ballet Hispánico and the Metropolitan Opera Ballet. Now Artistic Director of the Joffrey Concert Group, he has created work for companies across the United States and Europe. Performer, choreographer, teacher and author, he moves effortlessly between stage and studio. His true legacy may be the generations of dancers he inspires to take flight.
Kara Roselle Smith
Soundscape Artist
Roselle’s artistry is deeply informed by her Afro-Indigenous heritage. Every endeavor deliberately chosen with the intention of realizing liberation for all peoples. Her journeys through unrestricted genres are sure to inspire the revolutionary within.
Project CETI
Marine Analysis
Project CETI is bringing artificial intelligence, robotics and linguistics together in pursuit of an extraordinary dream: understanding sperm whales. After analyzing thousands of intricate click sequences, its researchers proposed the first sperm-whale phonetic alphabet. Their work is revealing a hidden world of rhythm, identity and conversation beneath the waves. Somewhere in the deep, another intelligence is speaking—and CETI is learning how to listen.
Day Brièrre
Artist
Haitian-born artist Day Brièrre creates color-drenched paintings, illustrations and ceramics inspired by folklore, ritual and Black feminine power. Playful, mystical and deeply ancestral, her work gives old stories a vivid new life.
Our Partners
vildwerk. is a New York-based nonprofit that raises global awareness of environmental conservation through dance. By bringing together world-class artists and leading conservation partners, Vildwerk transforms urgent environmental stories into powerful live performances that inspire audiences to connect with and protect the natural world. Founded by Chiara Gorodesky, a German-born English solicitor, conservation advocate, and performing arts executive based in NYC. In 2026, she received the Outstanding Contribution to Ballet Award at the 20th-anniversary Ballet Icons Gala at the London Coliseum.
Founded in the early 1970s and incorporated as a not-for-profit in 1981, and under the direction of Bradley Shelver, The Joffrey Concert Group is the resident dance company at the Joffrey Ballet School. The company provides young artists from the School’s year-round Trainee Program the opportunity to experience life as a professional dancer. In the years since its inception, the dancers of the Concert Group have studied and performed some of the most celebrated classical and contemporary repertoire. The Concert Group tours domestically and internationally.
Research-led and results-driven, Overstories courageously builds campaigns and movements that create change at every level: in hearts, in minds, and in the systems that determine whether the natural world survives. We build alongside allies, partners, and brands who share this same conviction.
Our Work
Protecting Aldabra Atoll in Seychelles
Our internationally-recognized campaign opposes the catastrophic threat of a nearby Qatari-funded Rosewood resort. In two years, we turned a suppressed environmental issue into a decisive national election issue, built a global coalition of 30+ NGOs, drove prestige headlines, and secured a national Commission of Inquiry and judicial process.
Fundraising for Wild Cat Conservation
We ran the campaign around Sotheby’s historic $18M sale of Rembrandt’s Young Lion Resting, with every dollar going to wild cat conservation. At its centre, we made Rembrandt’s lion vanish—unveiling a replica with its subject erased—to turn the auction into a global warning about extinction.
Photographic Exhibition
We developed the first ever conservation-oriented event for luxury house Dolce&Gabbana, with a percentage of proceeds from the auction and fashion sales funding leopard conservation initiatives at Panthera. We married design with curation and a powerful narrative to push leopard conservation towards new audiences.
What’s Next?
Dancing for the Wild
Gala Performance with vildwerk.
On January 21, 2027, vildwerk. presents DANCING FOR THE WILD — a one-night-only gala performance at New York City Center. With vildwerk and Panthera, we are commissioning a jaguar-inspired ballet by the acclaimed Brazilian dancer, Ingrid Silva, and building a cultural platform to reach new audiences and raise funds for conservation. Tickets are on sale now at vildwerk.org and nycitycenter.org
Krill Baby Krill
Making Activism Investable
Antarctic krill underpin the Southern Ocean food web, feeding whales, penguins and seals, yet industrial fleets are harvesting them at record scale for non-essential and replaceable omega-3 supplements. Overstories is building a new campaign model: challenging the industry’s social and commercial licence, shrinking demand for krill, and creating an Activist Investment Trust to accelerate investment in krill-free alternatives.
Stop Seabed Mining
Campaign with The Oxygen Project
Seabed mining would tear up vast stretches of the sea floor for minerals, threatening the balance of the ocean and atmosphere. It has never operated commercially anywhere, yet the US is now moving to sell mining leases in its own and international waters. Overstories is incubating a corporate campaign with BlueGreen Generation & The Oxygen Project to make it commercially unviable before it ever begins.
Please donate to help protect Aldabra Atoll, a UNESCO World Heritage site.
