Six Artist-Designed Menus for Considering a Shared Meal
June 15–August 25, 2022
This summer, the MIT List Visual Arts Center presents a remote program series with six artist-designed menus that respond to what is “on the table” when it comes to sharing a meal today. Participating artists include Lexie Smith, Seitu Ken Jones, Jon Rubin & Habibullah Sorosh, Lexa Walsh, Asunción Molinos Gordo, and TJ Shin.
Food is capable of evoking powerful memories that link us to people, places, and experiences. A shared meal with friends or family is one of life’s great pleasures. Food is inextricably tied to cultural identities, but current circumstances have invoked new challenges for gathering around a table. From increased food costs to physical limitations on gathering with one another, shared meals with friends and loved ones have taken on different forms in recent years.
These menus are driven by current politics surrounding food access and sustainability while considering historical precedents of artists who have made art through communal meals. While some artist-designed menus may provide dinner party instructions or recipes to prepare, others will be imaginative prompts that invite creative interpretation.
A new iteration of On The Table will be released on the List Center website every other Wednesday, from June 15 to August 25, 2022. Participants are invited to engage with the programs asynchronously throughout the season.
Accessibility
This series will include screen-reader-enabled PDFs for written components.
Registration
This program is free and open to our global audience. We recommend registering to receive a new release of On The Table in your inbox every other week throughout the summer.
Sign up and register to receive menus.
About the artists
Asunción Molinos Gordo is a research-based artist strongly influenced by disciplines such as anthropology, sociology and cultural studies. She employs installation, photography, video, sound and other media to examine the rural realm driven by a strong desire to understand the value and complexity of its cultural production, as well as the burdens that keep it invisible and marginalized. She has produced work reflecting on land usage, nomad architecture, farmers’ strikes, bureaucracy on territory, transformation of rural labour, biotechnology and global food trade. Molinos Gordo won the Sharjah Biennial Prize 2015 with her project WAM (World Agriculture Museum) and represented Spain official section at the 13th Havana Biennial 2019. Her work has been exhibited at venues including V&A Museum (London), ARNOLFINI (Bristol), The Townhouse Gallery (Cairo),Darat Al Funun (Amman), Tranzit (Prague), Cappadox Festival (Uchisar-Turkey).
Seitu Ken Jones is a multidisciplinary artist, advocate and maker based in St. Paul, Minnesota. Working between the arts and public spheres, Jones channels the spirit of radical social movements into experiences that foster critical conversations and nurture more just and vibrant communities from the soil up. He is recognized as a dynamic collaborator and a creative force for civic engagement.
Jon Rubin is an interdisciplinary artist who creates interventions into public life that re-imagine individual, group and institutional behavior. He has exhibited at the Solomon Guggenheim Museum; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; the Mercosul Biennial, Brazil; the Shanghai Biennial; the Carnegie International, The Lyon Biennale; as well as in backyards, in living rooms, and on street corners. Conflict Kitchen, his collaborative seven-year work with artist Dawn Weleski, was named as one of the 100 artworks that defined the decade by Artnet News. He recently collaborated with Iranian artist and curator Sohrab Kashani on a Creative Capital funded project tiled The Other Apartment. Jon is a Professor and Graduate Director in the School of Art at Carnegie Mellon University. is an interdisciplinary artist who creates interventions into public life that re-imagine individual, group and institutional behavior. He has exhibited at the Solomon Guggenheim Museum; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; the Mercosul Biennial, Brazil; the Shanghai Biennial; the Carnegie International, The Lyon Biennale; as well as in backyards, in living rooms, and on street corners. Conflict Kitchen, his collaborative seven-year work with artist Dawn Weleski, was named as one of the 100 artworks that defined the decade by Artnet News. He recently collaborated with Iranian artist and curator Sohrab Kashani on a Creative Capital funded project tiled The Other Apartment. Jon is a Professor and Graduate Director in the School of Art at Carnegie Mellon University.
TJ Shin is an interdisciplinary artist working at the intersections of race, gender, sexuality, and speciesism. Inspired by decentralized ecologies and queer sociality, they create living installations and imagine an ever-expanding self that exists beyond the boundaries of one’s skin. Shin is a 2020 New York Community Trust Van Lier Fellow and 2020 Visiting Artist Fellow at Urban Glass in Brooklyn. Shin has exhibited internationally at the Queens Museum, Lewis Center for the Arts, Wave Hill, Recess, Doosan Gallery, Klaus Von Nichtssagend Gallery, Cuchifritos Gallery, Knockdown Center, and Cody Dock, London.
Lexie Smith is a baker and a maker from New York. She uses bread as a vehicle for eternal inquiry and houses her explorations under the heading Bread on Earth, an art and research project she founded in 2016. Her writing, mostly on bread and grain, has been printed in publications around the world. She currently works on programs and strategy for Sky High Farm, a nonprofit farm in the Hudson Valley, NY, dedicated to diminishing food insecurity and empowering greater food sovereignty. She splits her time between the Hudson Valley and New York City.
Habibullah Sorosh is a scholar, screenwriter and playwright whose research includes the history of Afghan cinema, the structural effects of absurdist dramas, and Kazakh historical genre films. Born in the Jaghori district, Ghazni province of Afghanistan Habib received his Bachelor of Cinema and Theater from the Department of Fine Arts at Kabul University and Master of Art Criticism at Kazakh National Academy of Arts. For the past ten years Habib has been a professor at Kabul University in the Department of Fine Arts and Dramatic Literature. He is currently a Visiting Researcher in the Schools of Drama and Art at Carnegie Mellon University where he is researching the fields of theatre, cinema and art theory.
Lexa Walsh is an artist, cultural worker and experience maker. Walsh makes projects, exhibitions, publications and objects, employing social engagement, institutional critique, and radical hospitality. She creates platforms for interaction across hierarchies, representing multiple voices and inventing new ways of belonging, not only for people, but also for collections and archives. Walsh has done numerous exhibitions, tours and artist residencies internationally. Currently, she is launching the Bay Area Contemporary Arts Archive (BACAA), and is a virtual Artist in Residence at the Frank Ratchye STUDIO for Creative Inquiry at Carnegie Mellon University for the upcoming exhibition Shall Make, Shall Be: The Bill of Rights at Play.
About MIT List Visual Arts Center
The List Visual Arts Center, MIT’s contemporary art museum, collects, commissions, and presents rigorous, provocative, and artist-centric projects that engage MIT and the global art community.
The List Center galleries, programs, and public art collection are always free and open to all.
