As we slip out of summer and into the transitionary period of Fall, we welcome a time of reflection, learning, and intention. Here are a collection of exhibitions that we are looking toward for renewed inspiration as we look toward a season of harvest and growth.
July 16 – October 2, 2022
The second edition of FRONT International, a contemporary art triennial that spans various sites in Cleveland and Northeast Ohio, looks to public art in a bid for healing. Organized under the title ‘Oh, Gods of Dust and Rainbow’, drawn from a line in the 1957 Langston Hughes poem “Two Somewhat Different Epigrams”, the exhibition approaches healing by excavating regional history, broaching topics like environmental degradation caused by pollution and police violence through site-specific installations and programming. Traversing the triennial’s sites, visitors will encounter works such as research collective Cooking Sections’ intervention — a fountain installed in Lake Erie with the intent to aerate the lake, whose history of industrial pollution makes it susceptible to dangerous algal blooms. Event organizers are attempting to use the exhibition as an opportunity to facilitate an ongoing conversation between artists, cultural institutions, and the local community beyond the event’s October closing date.
September 10 – October 15, 2022
Over the past four years, Invisible Dog Art Center founder Lucien Zayan, has been hosting the dinner series la Salle a Manger (SAM) out of a private dining room adjacent to the Boerum Hill cultural center. For SAM, Zayan has collaborated with artists like Stephen Morrison and Mirna Bamieh of Palestinian Hosting Society to create immersive dining experiences that underscore food as an art and medium for storytelling. Drawing from the space’s history of bringing together food and art, the Invisible Dog will be launching Nafas, a five-week festival that includes performances, events as well as an exhibition that will bring together the works of over 30 artists who examine food through their practices. Highlights from the festival’s sweeping survey include Venezuelan artist and designer Maria Elena Pombo’s ‘530 (Starches of Abya Yala)’, which feature 530 bricks constructed of corn, cassava and potato starch, as well as an interactive performance by artist foodmasku on “dining in”.
Opens September 16, 2022
In Food in New York, the Museum of the City of New York attempts to map the ebbs and flows of the city’s ever-evolving food system. Using the city as a sort of blueprint, the exhibition brings together artists, designers and activists thinking critically about what the future of food might look like— from agriculture, to transportation and distribution, to restaurant dining— in New York and in cities beyond. Organized around the themes of producing, trading, and eating, Food in New York traces the evolution of the foodways that have shaped the city’s unique food culture. As such, the exhibit asks the question, how can the city be re-imagined and re-designed to reflect a new food future? Featured in the exhibit are objects from the museum’s collection around the city’s illustrious food history as well as new interventions such as Mary Mattingly’s Biosphere, an indoor ecosystem that will grow native plants in saltwater, and MOLD’s own Solar Cooking Cart.
