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Table Lessons

Throughout my work I explore everyday realities; some are commonly acknowledged and others that are ingrained into our daily existence that they do not receive critical exposure and remain true yet unrecognized.  Questions of sustainability and community are issues on the macroscopic scale but are tied to the microscopic details of how we live our lives and organize our commonplace existence.  My project is concerned with tying these grand notions of social connections and community with the microscopic concerns that might be read as the biography of the everyday lives.  It is on the microscopic level that these issues take on consequential significance of democracy, collectives, and the significant.

During my 2008 residency, this creative exhibition, interactive project and dining event explored the  connections developed and social networks formed by sharing meals and drinks.  Particular attention was paid to the role of the plate in these interactions.  With this ongoing project I highlight the social networks developed amongst people as they come together to share some time and food over a table.  This piece was made as part of my residency at Platteforum where I collaborated with numerous community members, with  other artists in residence, and with randomly interested people who wandered into my storefront location.  All interested participants helped form the final direction of this project.

After many gatherings, surveys and conversations, I translated components of the dialogue and connections into permanent decals and affixed to the tableware.  On a summer evening in 2010, Table Lessons became a dining performance exposing private food consumption to public exhibition.  Tableware specifically designed for this performance explored people’s eating habits and the transmission of personal, family, and cultural values through the social act of food consumption.   A group of 35 dining performers ate, used the tableware, and shared a meal in the  public location of a pedestrian thoroughfare in Commons Park, Denver, CO.

The final exhibit displayed the tableware where the plates served as a map of the earlier social interactions and discussions that occurred around the table during this  project.  In 2013 Tsehai Johnson returned to the Platteforum to continue working on Table Lessons  with the ArtLab high school internship program and at Platteforum’s UnGala fundraising event.

Exhibits/Interactive Performances

2013 Resident/Teacher with ArtLab high school internship program, Platteforum, Denver, CO

2013 UnGala performance and exhibit, Infinite Monkey, Denver, CO

2011 The Plate Exchange, a dining performance, 910Arts Gallery, Denver, CO

2010 Table Lessons, a dining performance, Platteforum, Denver, CO (with Biennial of the Americas)

2010 Sustenance/Sustain, Residency Exhibit, Platteforum, Denver, CO (with Biennial of the Americas)

Credits

Special thanks to Cissy Yin and PlatteForum

Photographs courtesy of Wes Magyar and Tsehai Johnson

 

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