Furniture for meditation
Sady Sullivan
Jae Rhim Lee, performance with Furniture Set, "prayingproject," Exit Art, 2005.
Jae Rhim Lee tells me I will spot her among the other artists at the prayingproject performance festival at Exit Art because she will be "the one in the white onesie." (won-sy : the all-in-one outfit that babies wear). Entering Exit Art’s enormous space on the west side of Manhattan, I notice Jae Rhim immediately as she prepares to mount the window-front stage. In the white-cotton onesie, she looks scientific, like an astronaut, except that her face and hands are exposed; she also looks infantile, padding about cozily as she lays out the ten pieces of her customized Bed. The pieces of Bed are arranged on the floor and it is not until Lee lies down on them that I realize that each glossy, pine piece fits perfectly the negative spaces between her prone body and the floor: the nape of the neck, curve of the lower back, backs of the knees. Each piece is hand-carved, as are the other performance-furniture artifacts on the stage, Chair and Foot Rests– ordinary items that she has converted specifically for her body. Lee lays still on the bed for a few minutes and then, without any signal, she moves silently to the chair, alternating between laying and sitting until the performance is over.
What does the performance have to with prayer, or faith, the remit of an odd few evenings of performances at Exit Art? Lee grew up with the Protestant church, and tells me after the performance: "I was taught that when you pray you are in dialogue with God. In reality, often you’re simply asking for things, like ‘God, please let me win the lottery.’ Meditation is about self-observation and a quieting of the mind, a method of self-dialogue." Lee created her Furniture Set in response to a ten-day Vipassana silent-meditation retreat. "I wanted to create a hard, yet perfectly comfortable, surface for my body which would eliminate any pressure points."
Lee’s furniture attempts to deliver her to weightlessness. She references Primo Levi and how "envious he is of astronauts being freed from the weight of one’s body." This was the subject of one his last essays before he committed suicide. "Extreme pain brings about the desire to transcend the body," Rhim says. "Making the bed was primarily an act of self-care. It’s really comforting to know that there is something made for you, that there is something in the world only for your body. It’s womblike."
Lee and I discuss how "not fitting in" and "not finding one’s place" are understood as expressions of pain, or even as suicidal feelings, when they could, in truth, reflect the opposite of despair: taking full responsibility for one’s health and happiness in this world. Lee says: "Modernity is plurality. So, given that there are so many options, how does one make choices? I’m not sure what would work for others, but my process has been somewhat of a return to basics. I’ve spent much of the past seven years examining what I wear, what I eat, how I sleep, who I spend time with, what my skills and talents are." Lee was a social worker before becoming an artist, and explains that "It’s pop psychology: take care of yourself before you learn to take care of others; that’s where I am now."
