An Artist in Yellow Meditating With a Seed in Washington Square Park

I had just entered Washington Square Park when I saw someone sitting on a square of gray fabric in the middle of the park, pinned to the ground with thirteen rocks. That person was Jemila MacEwan, an artist who uses they/them pronouns, shining like a piece of summer sun dropped onto the earth.

Dressed head to toe in yellow, the meditator wore a bright yellow outfit, a yellow hat, a flowing yellow robe, yellow pants, yellow socks, even a large yellow umbrella. MacEwan, a New York-based artist whose work blends art and environmentalism, was practicing something they called “seed meditation.”

MacEwan held a small white porcelain dish, like a soy sauce plate from a sushi restaurant in their hands. Inside was a little water and a single black turtle bean. The dish was constantly adjusted so the seed wouldn’t “get sunburned,” they said. Later, it would be planted—“an act of sustained care for something small and fragile but profoundly powerful.” The seeds they had planted in the park in previous years had survived and grown into small bushes.

“Two years ago, on a cold, gray spring day just before sunrise, I arrived at Washington Square Park and sat on the ground in front of the arch,” MacEwan wrote in a printed meditation that was handed out to passersby. Each day, they gave away ten copies to passersby who stopped to sit, meditate, and talk.

Around that same time, MacEwan had fallen into a deep depression. They lost a dear friend—not to death, but to life. The two simply disappeared from each other’s lives. MacEwan began meditating, often imagining their friend doing it alongside them. Then came an idea: Why not make that imagined connection real?

Now in its third year, the project had brought MacEwan back to the park, where they sat for twelve hours a day, from sunrise to sunset, talking and meditating with strangers to soothe their own soul and forge new human connections.

“The loss might make you feel sad forever,” they said. “But by doing this, I don’t feel the sadness every minute.”

For ten consecutive days, from April 9 to 18, MacEwan appeared in a different color each day: black, brown, blue, green, pink, purple, yellow, orange, red, and white. Each color represented a different theme: fear, doubt, the urge to control, shame, desire, grief, ambition, anger, pride, and illusion. They made each outfit themselves, drawing on their former work as a theater costume designer.

MacEwan invited me to meditate with them for ten minutes, eyes open or closed. I kept mine open, worried my phone recording on the ground might be stolen. Kneeling in front of them, stiff and self-conscious, I felt like a disciplined student before a master. Their white-dyed hair and heavily made-up eyes gave MacEwan a striking, almost theatrical presence.

This was the seventh day: yellow, themed around ambition. “I know that ambition that only serves myself is wasted potential,” they wrote in their booklet.

My own ambition, I thought, was hurting me. I was there on assignment, chasing a journalism story. My legs ached from kneeling too long. The sun burned through my socks and heated the soles of my feet.

Finally, MacEwan struck a wooden gong, signaling the end of the meditation. “The energy today is very different,” they said. “It’s not easy to meditate when there are struggling souls around.”

They were referring to a homeless man on a nearby bench, hurling insults in our direction. “That doesn’t make any sense,” he shouted. “Go back to your place, bitch.”

After nearly an hour under the relentless sun, my skin almost agreed with him. I left MacEwan sitting alone in the heat, their yellow umbrella raised, the small bowl carefully angled away from the light, waiting for the next stranger to stop.