Photo courtesy Tsohil Bhatia.
Dinner with Red Flower Collective: Eight New Sculptures
In conjunction with This Fire That Warms You by Tsohil Bhatia
Menu design by Rujuta Rao; drinks by Rupee Beer Company
Date: Wednesday, October 30, 2024
Time: 6:30–9:30 pm
In conjunction with Tsohil Bhatia’s solo exhibition, This Fire That Warms You, Red Flower Collective will host its sixteenth dinner at CUE’s gallery space, adding eight new sculptures to the show. These sculptures are ephemeral and will remain on view solely for the duration of the dinner. The event will include activations by exhibiting artist Tsohil Bhatia alongside their Red Flower Collective co-founder Erin Montanez, as well as an eight-course dinner prepared on site, drinks, a limited edition menu by artist Rujuta Rao, and the launch of the exhibition catalogue designed by Anamika Singh and with texts by the artist, exhibition mentor Puppies Puppies (Jade Guanaro Kuriki-Olivo), and catalogue essayist Swagato Chakravorty (mentored by Alpesh Kantilal Patel as part of CUE’s Art Critic Mentorship Program).
Each new sculpture presented as part of the event expands upon the phenomenology of the kitchen. They elaborate on that which is already present: pressure cookers in the moment before eruption; a chandelier of pots and pans that hangs quietly until it is shaken; stacked glassware embedded with gravitational tension; fruits and vegetables situated in a prolonged moment before disintegration. Together, the dinner and its related interventions open up new conceptual ground, introducing food as a material and centering the processes of the kitchen and its latent energies.
Tickets are available at sliding scale pricing from $50-$100; please select the option that best aligns with your ability to pay for an eight-course meal. All proceeds support expenses and labor by Red Flower Collective and CUE Art.
The dinner will consist of an eight-course meal with drinks included. Vegan, vegetarian, and gluten-free items will be offered.
Capacity is limited and tickets will be sold on a first come, first served basis. Please note that due to communal and food-based nature of this event, guests will be in close proximity. Masks are welcomed but not required.
Red Flower Collective, founded in 2021, is an iterative artist’s project based in New York City. The collective treats the kitchen as an open studio and a lab, studying both alchemical processes of cooking and the aesthetics of cultural production. Their work plays with form, going beyond a food-based practice to also incorporate installation, performance, and printed matter.
The collective aims to uplift and acknowledge often devalued reproductive labors of the kitchen. Participants exhibit familial histories and domestic inheritances through the sensory and the archival. With an emphasis on care and communal eating, they challenge notions of fetishization, transaction, and consumption as related to ecosystems of food service and its associated practices.
Red Flower Collective is decentralized from a singular, physical space. The collective has often prepared and hosted meals in apartment homes, opening up domestic spaces typically defined by their privacy and instead inviting in a public and community use. Their recent collaborations with institutions and residencies include: Chautauqua School of Art (2021), Asia Art Archive in America (2022), Flux Factory (2022), Hurford Center of the Arts and Humanities at Haverford College (2022), CUE Art Foundation (2023), Letra Muerta (2023), Mildred’s Lane (2023, 2024), Fire Island Residency (2024), and the New Art Dealers Alliance (2024).
Related Exhibition
To learn more about This Fire That Warms You, a solo exhibition by Tsohil Bhatia mentored by Puppies Puppies (Jade Guanaro Kuriki-Olivo), see here.
Support
This event is supported by a donation from Rupee Beer Company.
