a thing shared
SEPTEMBER 3 — OCTOBER 1, 2022
RECEPTION: thursday, september 8, 6 – 9 PM
featuring:
nickie sigurdsson + kristina stallvik
curated by tess wei
AUTOMAT Collective, 1400 N. American Street
(inside Crane Arts building)
HOURS: every saturday, 12 – 5 PM
or by appointment, email: tesswei17@gmail.com
This exhibition highlights the intersection of makers who engage with cooking and food as sites of cultural production and preservation. Of particular focus, is the way in which these visual and culinary artists engage with printed, digital, and alternative formats to re-present processes, recipes, menus, and meals shared.
Food (here broadly, edible matter intended for nourishment, community-making, and storytelling) participates in a constant process of transformation from planting and harvesting to preparing and eating. Therefore, the ways in which edible matter and its related rituals are documented, shared, and (re)interpreted become essential appendages to food, whose physical form is otherwise ephemeral. Through processes ranging from risograph printing to the gradual rehydration of silk handkerchiefs, a thing shared offers snow fungus (Tremella fuciformis), natural remedies, þorski (cod), garlic shells, and more.
The works presented in this exhibition have differing intentions, existing as: archives for personal and communal memories; prompts for others to engage in similar creative acts (in the way recipes are more step-by-step suggestions than instruction manuals); invitations to congregate at the table, so to speak; and bodies of research to sustain traditions of food growing, preparing, and partaking.