Feast: Radical Hospitality in Contemporary Art @ the Smart Musuem
5550 S. Greenwood Avenue
Chicago, IL 60637
February 16 – June 10, 2012
The act of sharing food and drink with others is a basic human pleasure and an enduring source of aesthetic inspiration. Today, the shared meal has become a compelling artistic medium: a surprising number of artists are using meals to advance aesthetic goals and foster critical engagement with our current culture.
These artist-orchestrated meals can offer a radical form of hospitality that punctures everyday experience, using food as a means to spark encounters and perceptions that aren't otherwise possible within our fast-moving and overly segmented society. Feast surveys these practices for the first time. Through a series of new art commissions in public spaces and a presentation within the Smart Museum, the exhibition will introduce new artists and contextualize their work in relation to some of the most influential artists of the last century, from the Italian Futurists to Gordon Matta-Clark and Rirkrit Tirvanija. Feast addresses the radical hospitality embodied by these artists and the social, commercial, and political structures that surround the experience of the shared meal.
The act of sharing food and drink with others is a basic human pleasure and an enduring source of aesthetic inspiration. Today, the shared meal has become a compelling artistic medium: a surprising number of artists are using meals to advance aesthetic goals and foster critical engagement with our current culture.
These artist-orchestrated meals can offer a radical form of hospitality that punctures everyday experience, using food as a means to spark encounters and perceptions that aren't otherwise possible within our fast-moving and overly segmented society. Feast surveys these practices for the first time. Through a series of new art commissions in public spaces and a presentation within the Smart Museum, the exhibition will introduce new artists and contextualize their work in relation to some of the most influential artists of the last century, from the Italian Futurists to Gordon Matta-Clark and Rirkrit Tirvanija. Feast addresses the radical hospitality embodied by these artists and the social, commercial, and political structures that surround the experience of the shared meal.
Artists
Feast includes art, documentary materials, and new public projects by Marina Abramovic and Ulay, Sonja Alhauser, Mary Ellen Carroll / Itinerant Gastronomy, Fallen Fruit, Theaster Gates, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, The Italian Futurists, Mella Jaarsma, Suzanne Lacy, Laura Letinsky, Tom Marioni, Gordon Matta-Clark, Lee Mingwei, Julio Cesar Morales, National Bitter Mellon Council, Michael Rakowitz, Ayman Ramadan, Red 76, Bonnie Sherk, Daniel Spoerri, Rirkrit Tiravanija, and others.Curator
Stephanie Smith, Smart Museum Deputy Director and Chief Curator.
