Have You Eaten?
The Yard: Williamsburg 33 Nassau Ave, Brooklyn
December 17th, 2021 – March 31st, 2022
From left to right:
Anushka Divecha “From My Kitchen I See Coconut Trees”; Heather Drayzen “Dinner Talk”; Alexandra Antoine “Our Plates”; Alexis Ward “Arroz Con Gandules y Pollo Guisado”
Ray Hwang, "intimidation at the dinner Table leads nowhere good"
Sonja John Curatorial Projects and The Yard: Greenpoint are pleased to present Have You Eaten? a group show featuring 21 artists making work about and around food. In Filipino and many other Asian languages, instead of asking “How are you?” one asks, “Have you eaten?” The phrase functions not only as a greeting, but also as an expression of care. How can access to food reflect on the existence or lack of care in our lives? When is a painting of a place setting about more than just dinner? How do our culinary traditions act as markers of community, memory, politics, identity, or difference?
Drawn from artists working across multiple mediums and culinary traditions, the works in Have You Eaten? go beyond mere still life. In this show, food is a first step through the doorway into artists’ lives. Place settings, dirty dishes, dinner tables, and school lunch trays host a theater full of dramas both bizarre and mundane. A can of Spam in Ray Hwang’s “intimidation at the dinner Table leads nowhere good” becomes a looming specter of post-colonial anxiety. In Adina Andrus’ sculpture “Amulet #9”, tiny gold-leafed beads transform Romanian candy wrappers into ritual objects, lending drugstore scraps an air of the sacred. For some artists, food is the subject and the material structure of their work – in “Outlines,” Kirsten Chiu reenacts childhood memories of their grandmother’s recipes by dyeing silk with Chinese red spinach, inextricably linking taste and tradition.
When we talk about food, we are never simply talking about food. Meals can be a site of chaos, or communion, and each artist participating in this show has come hungry. So, have you eaten? Kumain ka na ba? Come and have a seat at our table.
Have You Eaten? will be on view M-F 10am - 4:30 pm from December 17, 2021 - March 31, 2022. For viewings and sales information, contact Sonja John at sonjaljohn@gmail.com
The artists participating in Have You Eaten? are:
Kari Langslet, “TGIF”
Alexis Ward
Emily Bromberg
Abbi Kenny, “When Your Boyfriend Comes Home from the Hospital with a Whole Fish”
From left to right, Lori Larusso, “Kitchen Sink Still Life
(Runaway Olive); ” Katherine Verdickt, “Cat Lady"