First Supper

Josée Bienvenu Gallery is pleased to present First Supper, an installation about the intimate power of a dinner table. Elaine Tin Nyo, a conceptual artist based in New York City, invited 17 artists to collaborate around a 16 foot long table. Tin Nyo is a cook, photographer, and dancer that creates art through the relatonship of public intimacies. Tin Nyo's work may be attributed as an intimate performative action, real or implied, and utilizes her background through the sharing of food and drink, ballroom dancing or bathing.

In this exhibition, no food will be 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, whom 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 is an invitation to think about how we share food when we sit down at table together. The food and drinks, conversation and setting, all coax us to let down our guard and share ourselves, as well as the food. Often, secrets are shared and new ideas are born. If we sit down as strangers, we leave a bit less estranged.

Elaine Tin Nyo is a member of the artist group, dBfoundation, whose project, CAFÉ inhabited The Phillips Collection in Washington DC in 2009. On January 16, her project, Black Bania, a public sauna set in a tipi on a frozen lake in Minnesota, will open to the public for four weekends. Her photographs, recipes, videos, installations and performances have been presented by The Phillips Collection, BlindSpot, Deitch Projects, Thread Waxing Space, The New Museum, Creative Time, The Bronx Museum, The Neueberger Museum, Art in General, Chez Bushwick, and The French Culinary Institute.