Soaking in the din of skateboards, stoners, shrieks, and avenue performers, a black turtle bean step by step germinates in the palm of Jemila MacEwan’s hand in Manhattan’s Washington Square Park. Beginning April 12 and ending on the 21st, MacEwan’s efficiency, “Seed Meditation” (2024), has the artist seated in noble silence from dawn to sundown for 10 days to witness the bean’s progress in an act of “divine love.”
“Much like the way a pure white light can be broken into a spectrum of colors, I believe that divine love is made up of many components,” writes MacEwan, who they/them pronouns, writes in a supplemental guide they’ve been distributing to those that cease by to affix in on the meditation. For every day of the efficiency, the artist dons a home made outfit of a distinct stable coloration from the pure world that they attribute to a separate part of affection, embarking on a brand new non secular course of for each 13-hour day.
To be honest, regardless of the strict construction of the efficiency, MacEwan is versatile inside purpose. On April 12, the primary day of the piece, they had been rained out of the park; the artist needed to toss their clothes and blanket in the dryer till the clouds rolled out to make sure that they wouldn’t fall sick for the remaining 9 days. They even have a help group on deck for well being and security administration, and over a dozen spare beans on the identical germination timeline in case one thing occurs to the unique.
Hyperallergic managed to meet up with them about an hour earlier than sundown that first day. The small bean in their fingers had already began to swell, its shell turning into shiny and purple-ish from its saturation in a dish of water.
MacEwan defined that they’d chosen to meditate on the black turtle bean as a result of it’s endemic to the Americas. “They are now grown on every continent except Antarctica, and are responsible for feeding billions of people worldwide,” MacEwan stated. “The name ‘black turtle bean’ points to the Indigenous cosmology of this continent as Turtle Island, which recognizes the land on which we stand as an animate living entity. The spirit of that support and the interconnected animacy of our world is what this work is about.”
Anecdotally, their father taught the artist that black turtle beans steadiness nitrogen ranges in soil. The seed, due to this fact, “is a wonderful emblem of support and care, as they repair soil and provide nourishment.”
As the bean slowly begins to sprout in MacEwan’s open fingers, additionally they expressed that Washington Square Park is the “palm of the hand that gently holds us all.”
To their level, the historic and cultural entropy of the city landmark interprets right into a harmonic vitality reverberating between anybody and everybody who spends time there. The park itself has undergone many transformations in New York City’s historical past as nicely, from a public grave to a navy parade floor to a lovely hub for artists and performers. MacEwan additionally shared that the park grew to become an vital reprieve for them whereas working in Manhattan and recalibrating their life after transferring from Australia.
Though MacEwan has been bodily and spiritually making ready for this efficiency for a couple of yr now, they famous in their accompanying guide that this meditation comes because the world “has been bearing witness to the abhorrent violations of life, liberty, and freedom of the Palestinian people.”
In response to Hyperallergic’s inquiry about what silence means in moments like this, particularly amid calls to talk up and converse out, MacEwan expressed that “silence does not always mean detachment or disengagement.”
“I think what is necessary is that we are able to take time to sincerely commit to engaging in actions — silent or otherwise — that feel necessary and honest,” the artist continued. “Participating in issues of justice and liberation are too important for us to limit the ways we engage with them. Silence can speak of many things. After all, a germinating seed is silent.”
