[-empyre-] food nostalgia

[Amanda McDonald Crowley]

Renate,

On Mar 5, 2016, at 4:25 PM, Renate Terese Ferro wrote:

>   Given your recent exhibition at Radiator Gallery in Long Island City I thought it might be interesting for us to hear about how how your curatorial practice has evolved in relation to our current topic.  


Thanks again for the invitation to talk a little about my current exhibition, food nostalgia. http://publicartaction.net/food-nostalgia/

For those of you who might be in New York, the show is up through March 13 and I will be in the gallery on the afternoons of Friday March 11 and Sunday March 13. Do drop by if you're in the Long Island City area :)

So... its perhaps in some ways a little off point for -empyre- as the exhibition doesn't explore digital culture pre se. But increasingly I find that my work as a curator, while deeply informed by the years I have worked in the media art and technology field, sometimes veers off into different "artforms" as I explore ideas as much as the medium in which artists are working. I continue to be interested in the space that artists whose work particularly appeals to me, often occupy space between high art and popular culture.

In fact food nostalgia, is an exhibition of paintings, photographs, video, sculpture and installation works by artists Cey Adams (New York), Emilie Baltz (New York), Disorientalism (Katherine Behar and Marianne M. Kim, New York/ Arizona), Gonzalo Fuenmajor (Miami, FL), Kira Nam Greene (New York) and Jonathan Stein (Coral Springs, FL). 

From the press release: “food nostalgia looks at food in contemporary America through a lens of fast food iconography and industrial food production” says curator, Amanda McDonald Crowley. “Participating artists variously draw on popular cultural references, brand recognition, bodies, memory, nostalgia, and playfulness. They ask us to think about our relationship to our colonial pasts, feminist thinking, cultural diversity, and marketing culture. The corporatisation of our food systems is deeply entrenched in our psyche; historical and contemporary trade routes of our food affect our cultural landscape.” As a framework to explore how we cook, eat, and consume, food nostalgia will be a platform to share ideas, and food. 

"Kira Nam Greene’s paintings and drawings are conceptual self-portraits with collaged images of food and complex patterns that represent the plurality and multiplicity of her identity as an Asian-American woman. For Kira, food acts as a metaphor for the idealization of the female body and the surrogate for desire to consume and control. During a residency in the “bread basket” of America, her Nebraska Suite series is the first time that she consciously used fast food imagery in her work. 

"Emilie Baltz grew up in Joliet, Illinois in a house without junk food. Her French mother was an incredibly creative and healthy cook, but all around her families were serving up junk food. A little jealous, and a lot intrigued, this experience inspired her Junk Foodie series: her images are both alien and familiar, but mostly fun interpretations of traditional recipes rendered using junk food ingredients. Jonathan Stein finds his inspiration in grocery stores and fast-food spots. 

"In his Shiny Sparkly Goes Down Easy series Jonathan takes iconic images such as Spam, Ritz crackers and a bucket of KFC to create bling objects where shinier is better and a glitzy surface masks a loaded commentary on fast food consumption. 

"Cey Adams also draws inspiration from popular iconography and brand recognition. In CREAM Cey takes the iconographic brand image, reputedly a portrait of African American chef, Frank L White and using collage and design principles, creates a richly textured and subtly rendered black on black painterly abstraction. 

"Gonzalo Fuenmayor’s Papare series examines ideas of exoticism and the complicit and amnesic relationship between ornamentation and tragedy. Opulent Victorian chandeliers and other elements, reminiscent of a decadent colonial past, proliferate from banana bunches, alluding to a tragic and violent history associated with Banana trade worldwide. Disorentalism’s Maiden Voyage focuses on race and labor in American food production and promotion. 

"The Disorientals track down the Land O’ Lakes Indian Maiden, who has been reborn as an empowered executive. 

"food nostagia takes a critical, yet humorous, look at how junk food and brand cultures impact contemporary food systems and consumption."

The exhibition itself did come from research I was doing out in Omaha, Nebraska, in 2014. Omaha is right in the middle of the so-called ‘bread basket’ of America (and quite literally in the middle of the USA). The ideas for the exhibition arose from conversations I was having with artists regarding the dichotomy of working in a place where food deserts, abundant big agriculture, local farmers markets and interesting restaurants specializing in local produce existed alongside one another, but the conversations weren’t happening about who has access to food or where it comes from. Four of the artists in the show - Kira, Cey, Gonzalo, and Emilie - were doing residencies out there at the same time as I. And our morning walks (sometimes taken together, but often just as our private morning walk/ run/ cycle before we got down the the business of making work and doing research) often took us through the Con Agra campus, just blocks away from our residency; and then past the Old Market district in Omaha that was full of small artisanal restaurants and, on Saturdays, a local farmers market. 

I've been living and working in the US for 10 and a half years now. The urgency of the completely broken food production system here has meant that I think a lot about the topic, and increasingly, I'm also undertaking curatorial work exploring this area. Doing this research in the middle of America was, well..., eye-opening to say the least. I do recall tweeting, as I drove from Omaha to Kansas City one day "I can confirm we grow both crops out here: corn AND soy". And that's what we find in the supermarkets here. 85% of produce in American supermarkets contain corn product! ....85%! Its a [heavily subsidised] commodity crop, not an investment in food!!

But this exhibition isn't trying to beat anyone over the head. Its a fun exhibition and the works are very beautiful. And I can't deny that I did serve devil dogs, twinkies, cheese puffs, and cheese whiz at the opening! Eep! Though Stefani Bardin did also provide "reverse engineered" and wholesome versions of gatorade and gummy bears at the junk food brunch we held the weekend before last. 

Hopefully the exhibition makes people think a little.....




--
Amanda McDonald Crowley 
Cultural Worker / Curator
http://publicartaction.net

@amandamcdc

food nostalgia is currently on view at Radiator Gallery until March 13

-emprye- currently moderating thematic email listserv conversation on the topic #ArtTechFood through March 2016

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au/pipermail/empyre/attachments/20160309/a06afb96/attachment.html>