I Heard the Night’s Cry: Jennie Jieun Lee’s Homage to Marie Laveau（2）

🪔 The Installation: A Sanctuary Reborn Lee’s work is a ritual of memory. 🌿 Using clay, wood, and found objects, she reconstructed Laveau’s tomb as she remembered it in 1994: 🪦💫Ceramic dresses dangle from wooden racks, their skirts etched with symbols of protection. Flower offerings (collected from friends in Sullivan County, NY) sit in handmade vessels, their petals frozen mid-wilt. 📝X marks—carved into wood, painted on paper—echo the prayers of past pilgrims. “This isn’t a replica,” Lee insists. “It’s a conversation between then and now. The souls who visited Laveau’s grave are still here, whispering.” 🗣️💫 🌀 Why It Matters: Ghosts and Grace Lee’s installation forces us to confront what we lose when we “preserve” history. St. Louis Cemetery No. 1 became a museum piece, its raw spirituality replaced by order. Yet in Lee’s recreation, the chaos returns—the clutter, the color, the urgency of human longing. 🎭🕯️ It’s also a love letter to New Orleans itself, a city where magic and mortality intertwine. As Lee writes: “Marie Laveau taught us that power lives in the spaces between—between life and death, fact and fiction, sacred and profane.” 🌉💀 👣 Uncle Lin’s Take: Walking with Spirits Visiting Lee’s installation? Here’s how to honor its spirit: 🔸 Touch the clay: Run your fingers over the ceramic dresses—each crack holds a story. 🔸 Leave an offering: A coin, a poem, a pinch of spice.🌿 🔸 Whisper a wish: Close your eyes. Imagine Laveau’s tomb, alive with flowers and footsteps. 🌟 The Night’s Cry Lives On In a world obsessed with tidy histories, Jennie Jieun Lee reminds us that some truths can only be felt—not filed away. 💌 🌸Her work isn’t just about Marie Laveau. It’s about the hunger to connect, to believe that our voices might echo beyond the grave. Come for the art; leave with the chills. Because if you listen closely, you might still hear it—the night’s cry, soft but persistent, calling us home. 🌙🎨 #ContemporaryArt #VoodooQueen #NewOrleansMystique