Blog

Cab­in Upon A Hill

Jul 25, 2025 1:43 pm

Post by Amy Wang, Com­mu­ni­ca­tion & Pub­lic Affairs Intern at the Trust for Gov­er­nors Island. 

From my van­tage point, high up on Dis­cov­ery Hill, the cab­in appears seclud­ed and pri­vate, its eggshell tip just peek­ing through the canopy of trees. The climb itself felt like a small rev­e­la­tion — tall grass­es brush­ing against my legs, the path open­ing wider as the sky stretched above. The tem­per­a­ture shift­ed as I reached the top — hot and burn­ing, the kind of sun that press­es down, dry and constant.

But I think to myself, no wor­ries. A rest stop—a cab­in.

When I arrived, I looked around the shed, inspect­ing it for an entry but found none. I knocked, but there was no echo from the inside. It becomes clear, to my dis­ap­point­ment, that the cab­in only appears like a sanc­tu­ary, but it isn’t a real home. Where there should be hol­low space to house some­one, there is sol­id fill instead, and where­as the win­dows should offer a glimpse in, they pro­trude out instead. The house is invert­ed, inside out. 

Nat­u­ral­ly, I turn my atten­tion back to the out­side with­out any option to go in. Into the daz­zling har­bor, the con­spic­u­ous har­bor of the Stat­ue of Lib­er­ty, the vast­ness of the city sky­line from the high­est peak of the Island, I real­ize that I didn’t lose any­thing but gained much. Turned out, per­haps loss and abun­dance were two sides of the same coin, and my reflec­tion dis­placed my orig­i­nal dis­ap­point­ment. Under­neath the back­drop of the steel and glass, I also real­ize that the city is nev­er so far away, escape is nev­er tru­ly real, but that is actu­al­ly okay. The promise of retreat con­jured up by my own expec­ta­tions final­ly breaks free and with that, apart. The cab­in grad­u­al­ly feels more and more out of place now – uncanny. 

Uncan­ny is exact­ly what artist Rachel Whiteread intend­ed when she cre­at­ed the instal­la­tion. By plac­ing this pic­turesque con­cept on top of a hill, over­look­ing the har­bor, but then deny­ing entry into the house, she invites – or more forces– view­ers to look out­wards as a means of look­ing inwards at their own con­tra­dic­tions. She invites deep­er intro­spec­tion into the sub­tle, uncon­scious needs inhab­it­ing our own neg­a­tive spaces. What I dis­cov­ered on my trek was not what I orig­i­nal­ly expect­ed, but arguably even more mean­ing­ful; I was look­ing for space, but end­ed up find­ing per­spec­tive instead. 

Walk­ing down again, I sud­den­ly remem­ber a fact that I heard in my ear­li­er days on the Island: That the Island has lay­ers of nat­ur­al and arti­fi­cial, just like the cab­in, a seem­ing­ly nat­ur­al con­cept, amidst so much fruit shrubs and monarch but­ter­flies end­ed up being a man­made enti­ty, built unnat­u­ral­ly. Turns out, the land of the Island is part­ly made from the debris of the 4, 5, 6 sub­way lines and it was from this urban wreck­age to green space, I had longed for a moment of ​“escape.”

But I have tran­scend­ed beyond this bound­ary: Gov­er­nors Island puts the human in nature and more than being just nat­ur­al or arti­fi­cial, it is art. The art in artifi­cial is shaped, curat­ed, inten­tion­al, and gen­uine. But most of all, it is welcoming. 

My friends are at the bot­tom of the hill wait­ing for me. Well, how was it? They asked, but I replied, I didn’t find it. It would’ve been sweet, but…

What I found was not an escape, but a return; not soli­tude, but pres­ence; not a place to hide, but a rea­son to come back down the hill— to you, to this, and to the art of being a part of some­thing, and not apart from it. 

Cab­in is pre­sent­ed by Gov­er­nors Island Arts, and is locat­ed on Dis­cov­ery Hill. Click here to view all Gov­er­nors Island Arts pub­lic artworks. 

Gov­er­nors Island Arts presents its pro­gram with sup­port from Bloomberg Phil­an­thropies, Cha­ri­na Endow­ment Fund, Star­dust Fund, Sur­go Foun­da­tion US, Don­ald A. Pels Char­i­ta­ble Trust, the New York State Coun­cil on the Arts (NYSCA) with the sup­port of the Office of the Gov­er­nor and the New York State Leg­is­la­ture, Car­rie Den­ning Jack­son and Dan Jack­son, the Rip­ple Foun­da­tion, the Howard Gilman Foun­da­tion, the Jerome L. Greene Foun­da­tion, and the Cowles Char­i­ta­ble Trust.