Ancestral Foods: Family Feasts
Ancestral Foods: Family Feasts
Curator: Deborah Yasinsky
October 12 -November 18, 2023
Opening Reception - October 12, 2023, 6 – 8pm
Closing Reception – November 18, 2023, 6 – 8pm
In difficult times we seek comforts that can ease our angst and anxieties. The solace of ancestral foods offers comfort like no other. Foods that one grew up with are revisited through remembrances and re-creations of recipes and family gatherings. The memories of times in kitchens filled with family lore and sensory experiences are a repast from our present. The artists in this exhibition connect to those memories in varied ways. Whether as a soothing balm, an act of resistance, or a call to action they recall and imbed their family’s food history into their practice, reclaiming and reinterpreting for their modern sensibilities. Traditions of food culture encapsulate family, ritual, and culture in sensory tastes and smells propelling one back to a time or place that they may never have been. Food is a source of deep connection to our cultural ancestry and an avenue for preserving one's own unique cultural identity. Food identities often merge various cultures into a fusion of cuisines. Artists' interpretations of food are memorials to their lineage elucidating the lessons from these rich physical food encounters bound to family, culture, ritual, ancestry, and identity.
Artists:
Eugene Bluford, Leenda Bonilla, Patricia Cazorla, Jordan Corine Cruz, Carlos W. Encarnación, Katherine Miranda, Alexis Marie Montoya, Ruth Rodriguez, Nancy Saleme, and Stanley Steele.