We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Jemila MacEwan a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Jemila, appreciate you sitting with us today to share your wisdom with our readers. So, let’s start with resilience – where do you get your resilience from?
Resilience comes from experience. You only know how resilient you are if you have travelled through all kinds of adversities. As humans we suffer greatly and often. It’s how we meet that suffering that matures us. Whenever I am at a low point I focus my attention on correcting my attitude, so that I am able to learn and grow so that I can actually benefit from the hard times. Having faced all kinds of difficulties, rejections and limitations within my life as an artist, I have learned that there are inner and outer resources that are always there to support you. Our capacity for courage, patience, generosity, compassion, humility and creativity are the inner resources that are always available to us if we choose to engage them. Outwardly cultivating community and taking care of others in whatever capacity you can manage, means that when times are tough, there are people you can call on to take care of you. I am lucky to live in New York City where it is relatively easy for me to find people to be in community with; and I think it’s important to be able to find people who share a vision of success as coming from collective care.
Appreciate the insights and wisdom. Before we dig deeper and ask you about the skills that matter and more, maybe you can tell our readers about yourself?
I am an environmental artist, and it’s my job to find ways to influence social and environmental change through art.
For me this means looking beyond the needs we can already see to understand the needs that are invisible to us. For instance if you take any environmental issue of our time, it is abundantly clear what is needed, for example: we need a healthy planet to survive and to do that we need to severely curb our energy consumption; we need to protect our air and waterways from pollutants; we need more equitable and restrained use and distribution of natural resources. We know we need these things. The evidence could not be clearer, and yet the needed change is not happening. By viewing this self-destructive behavior as a symptom of a societal illness you can get closer to the underlying needs of our society. And just like any psychological illness you don’t try to reason with the part that is the most delusional and unwell, you try to work with the part that is still motivated to get well. In my art practice I speak to the part of society that’s still fighting to be well, and together we try to find a way to make the healthy part of humanity stronger than the part that is driven toward destruction.
To me every action is at its core an ecological action. A lot of the time I find the answers I’m looking for in the awe inspiring work of ecosystems, and then I bring audiences along with me on that interspecies journey. To do this I use all kinds of performance techniques, from meditation and endurance, to humor and play, as a way to surprise people out of human-centric habits of thinking. Curiosity can be cracked open like an egg and once it’s open it wont go back inside. A lot of people think fear and outrage are the best way to get through to people, you might get their attention that way but in my opinion if you want people to bring their imagination and creativity you need to get them curious.
For example this April I did a long durational performance called ‘Seed Meditation’ in Washington Square Park, New York. For 10 days I sat in the park from sunrise to sunset (13 hours a day) holding a seed in my hand for the duration it took to germinate. Each day I wore a different color to honor a different facet of our universe that supports the existence of life. I sat there in noble silence, meditating, everyday with a small sign explaining what I was doing. This action alone made a lot of people curious, many people sat with me, some talked to me and told me about their lives. I learned a lot about support, and love during those 10 days. Sometimes what is needed is a gesture of genuine devotion to life on earth to reflect back to people that they too are loving, caring, and profoundly valuable living beings. This alone is enough to make the fabric of society a little bit stronger.
If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?
Honesty. Be honest with yourself and others about who you are and what you believe. Be sincere in your motivations and goals. This kind of honesty is a practice but it will help you to stop comparing yourself to others and will attract people to you who are drawn to your integrity and unique self-expression. The more honest you are in your attitude and actions the less insecurity will be a problem. Honesty is the path to stronger self-esteem and self-worth.
Generosity. Support your peers without an agenda. It is so tough to do things alone and people shouldn’t be isolated. Generosity is the most uplifting form of connection I can think of. In my experience, generosity means helping others in need, acknowledging the hard work of those around you, sharing the resources and connections that come your way, focusing on the positive attributes and efforts of those around you. And most importantly extending that generosity equally to yourself.
Curiosity. Curiosity is the most valuable attribute a creative person can cultivate. Imagination thrives on curiosity. As a young undergrad I had a wonderful design teacher Trina Parker, when I turned in a half-assed design assignment I gave the excuse that I didn’t find the assignment inspiring enough. She responded ‘If you’re not inspired it means you aren’t looking hard enough.’ And of course she was right, and I’ve never been short on ideas since then.
To close, maybe we can chat about your parents and what they did that was particularly impactful for you?
I am the youngest of 5 kids so I got to learn a lot from my parents and my siblings. But I can think of three big things that have undeniably impacted who I am today:
By responding to our questions with more questions, they fostered independent thought and opened us up to discovering our own experimental forms of thinking.When they offered up answers it would be to open up dialogue rather than define limitations.
Even though we were relatively poor, they prioritized art materials and books in our house over other material possessions, which set the intrinsic value of creativity and knowledge as being the most important things to strive for.
They demonstrated that all kinds of knowledge, from the scientific to the spiritual, were valid and important. There was this attitude that these different knowledge systems were not contradictory, they were in fact complementary and enabled me to hold complex, stratified worldviews in my head simultaneously.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.jemilamacewan.com
- Instagram: @jemila_macewan
Image Credits
Image 1 Shayla Blatchford
Image 2, 3 and 4 Campbell Watson
Image 5 David B Smith
Image 6 Roy Baizan
Image 7 David B Smith
so if you or someone you know deserves recognition please let us know here.
