Yesterday, I went to see an exhibit of video installation by my former intern Joyce Y Lee at Fulton Center.
"Manahatta Waterways: A Sanctuary " (2026) © Joyce Yu-Jean Lee, NYCT Fulton Center. Commissioned by MTA Arts & Design. Photo: Stefan Hagen
I did not think through to realize that this will be the first time I will be in the Oculus World Trade Center space, a beautiful Santiago Calatrava building on Ground Zero that I have been meaning to visit. As I note in our new book “Beauty and Justice: Creating a Life of Abundance and Courage”, we often do not realize how trauma affects our lives, and how we subtly, and unconsciously, we avoid places of pain. When I walked it to the splendid space, looking for Joyce’s installation, I was overwhelmed with a sense of displacement and welcome at the same time.
My son Clayton and I had planned to get together for ramen in NYC earlier (went to Karakatta…highly recommended!), and we decided to meet at Joyce’s installation. Joyce had become a integral part of our community after her internship with me in the summer of 2000 (she was at University of Pennsylvania then studying marketing), by moving to New York City, and ultimately choosing to become an artist after 9/11/01. She then became our first full time staff for International Arts Movement (now IAMCultureCare).
When Clayton appeared through the turnstiles (he lives in Brooklyn to do his comedy, music production and community building), I had this sense of relief, of sinews reconnecting within my soul. Then, as this video shows, Joyce herself arrived soon after hopping on the train after her class she was teaching at Pratt Institute (she is a professor there now).
Calatrava building and hub is designed, appropriately, as whale bones turned into wings. Many people do not know that the beaches surrounding New York Harbor are filled with whales and dolphins (of course, pollution has caused many of these wonders to stay away…but they are coming back now). Joyce’s installation (runs through mid April) reconnects the underwater world of New York Harbor, her history and contemporary art in a beautiful way.
I stood transfixed in wonder and awe at the cavernous underground space with hundreds of people streaming through. Like Jonah swallowed up by a large fish, we pass through passages of the unknown, sometimes treacherous, darkness. Even though we are called toward missive shores of Ninavah, we can lose hope and be overwhelmed by the circumstances of fear. It is when we are met with faces of the familiar, and when they actually walk with us through that darkness that we find healing.
