Thinker in Residence
Joyce Yu-Jean Lee
image: Jo Yarrington, The Watchful Eye, NYC
Amidst bustling city streets and today’s election media frenzy, it feels downright countercultural to stop and stare at an unassuming sun shadow… yet that is what I found myself doing upon arriving at the 2024 Art in Odd Places (AiOP) festival. A clear glass orb with an amber egg-yolk center refracted warm sunlight onto the 14th Street sidewalk. “The Watchful Eye” is a performative sculpture, a glass sphere made by Jo Yarrington during her artist residency at the Museum of Glass in Tacoma, WA. She shares about her intervention with glass and light: “It is about allowing oneself to be seen, to be open and to be vulnerable as one is bathed in the light and even, if just for a moment, to experience in this illumination a state of grace.” Her quiet yet powerful performance brings to mind the words of Simone Weil, “Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.” Yarrington’s glass eye draws beautiful light onto anything it beholds.
This year’s AiOP theme is care. According to Weil, to care is to bring attention, and according to Yarrington, specifically our coveted watchful gaze. As one data point in the barrage of contemporary media, my eyes are tired of watching political ads endorsed by U.S. presidential candidates and reading never-ending emails. My eyes have no more tears to shed, despite feeling devastated by the news about the wars in Ukraine and Palestine. AiOP whimsically wins the gaze of passersby, tourists and festival attendees, no small victory in this tumultuous season. These performance artists prompt us to look at alternative embodiments of generous care. Three artworks in particular offered me a brief respite, and conjured Judeo-Christian principles of grace and free goodwill.
image Jo Blin, The Red Carpet, Prague
“The Red Carpet” by Jo Blin, a self-proclaimed angry immigrant/artist/performer currently based in Prague, literally stopped me in my tracks. She turned the public street into a theater stage with the gesture of rolling out the red carpet to pedestrians. The monolithic plane of the red carpet delineates space for celebrities, the famous and the rich—instantaneously elevating the cigarette and dog-poop infested sidewalk into an honorific platform. Blin’s singular gesture with the medium of red velvet breaks down invisible social hierarchies. It reminded me of the palm branches laid by the crowd as ground covering to commemorate Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem. Perhaps this was an early “red carpet” moment? In my case, rather than donkey’s hooves, my canine companions for the day, Gizmo the giant Shih-tzu and Sonni the Miki walked their furry paws across Blin’s stage for a photo opp. Her work imbued me with a gleeful sense of delight over the rare opportunity for these animals and pedestrians to be acknowledged like royalty.
video: AnimaeNoctis, Silvia Marcantoni Taddei & Massimo Sannelli, Italy
Crouched beneath the life-size sculptures of The Great Elephant Migration, I found the husband and caregiver wife duo, Silvia Marcantoni Taddei and Massimo Sannelli, who trekked from Italy to perform “The Circle of Dirtiness and Cleanliness”. Silvia, wears a white hazmat suit and matching white-rimmed sunglasses. Massimo is shirtless and covered head to toe in wet mud, which they dug up in New Jersey to haul into Manhattan. They do not speak during the performance, instead handing out a printed artist statement when people ask them questions. The statement reads, “cleaning means that you get dirty too” and includes their testimonies of depression and eating disorder. The performance “pays homage to all the people who need caring. And to the people who care and look after others.” Their washing turns my mind to the ancient Jewish ritual of foot washing as a sign of hospitality and servitude. This cyclical purification performance demonstrates the individual humility required to make an intimate relationship with another thrive in moments of suffering.
These three artworks from the 2024 Art in Odd Places festival led me on a contemplative journey about care. My eyes felt briefly restored, and lighter after seeing these performances unfold. I am reminded that in this whirlwind of daily stressors, that care starts with the rare gift of attention: Seeing the light in oneself and others, equitably paving the way for all, and cleaning up the messes that come with love. Such extreme forms of attention and care become transcendental. As Simone Weil posits in her book Gravity and Grace, “Absolutely unmixed attention is prayer.”
Joyce Yu-Jean Lee, November 5, 2024
