NYAB Event - Elaine Tin Nyo "First Supper"

Elaine Tin Nyo "First Supper"

Josee Bienvenu Gallery

This event has ended.

Josée Bienvenu Gallery presents First Supper, an installation about the intimate power of the dinner table. Elaine Tin Nyo, a conceptual artist based in New York City invited 17 artists to collaborate around a 16 foot long table. Cook, photographer, and dancer, Tin Nyo makes art about public intimacies. Her works refer to intimate performative action (real or implied) be it the sharing of food and drink, ballroom dancing, or bathing.

In this exhibition there will be no food served at the table, just the potential of twelve meals, twelve friendships (new, existing, or rekindled), and the coming twelve months. The hostess/artist sets the table with artworks, the results of conversations with 17 artists: humor, insight and conspiracy. Twelve "plates" and menus are the result of a collaboration with twelve artists who are the subjects of the menus. Each of these twelve menu-portraits is a score for a performance, a potential real meal that may be executed by Tin Nyo during the coming year at the house of who acquires the portrait-menu. Other artwork-elements complete the setting: a tablecloth, napkins, goblets, conversation and lighting. First Supper is a gathering, a communion among artworks inspired by a series of tête-à-têtes.

First Supper invites you to think about how we share food: secrets are shared and new ideas are born when we sit down at a table together. If we sit down as strangers, we leave a bit less estranged. The food and drink, the conversation, and the setting all coax us to let down our guard. Along with the food, we share ourselves at supper.