Photo Credit: Kylie Shaffer
Taste Test: Dinner Banquet
A performance by Xirin and Sebastian Chacon
Saturday, June 26 at 7pm ET
RSVP for live video link
In Taste Test: Dinner Banquet, performers Xirin and Sebastian Chacon will consume a three-course meal together while exploring the act of regurgitation. Through a series of ritualistic gestures around the devouring of an elegant feast, the performers share a repeated intimate expression and experiment with ideas of oral fixation, sensual pleasure, and excess. Similar to their performance of the egg-transfer in the film Hope Eats the Soul, Taste Test exists in various mediums and iterations and demonstrates the artists’ interests in the duet as an art form. For its iteration at CUE, Taste Test will explore the use of video as a means to evoke the detailed elements of the performance that are both abject and grotesque; a depiction of intimacy that is only further obfuscated by its timely livestream during the COVID-19 pandemic. Taste Test will be performed at a private off-site location and livestreamed for an audience on CUE’s website.
If you have access questions or needs, please contact info@cueartfoundation.org (ideally with at least 48 hours before the event) and we will do our best to accommodate you.
Taste Test: Dinner Banquet is presented in conjunction with the group exhibition, In Longing, curated by Anna Cahn.
Filmed by Mason Wilson and Anastasia Warren.
Sebastian Chacon is New York-based actor and performance artist. As an actor, he has appeared onstage at The Public Theatre, the Duke on 42nd, and Cherry Lane, among others. He also works extensively on screen, most recently in the series Penny Dreadful: City of Angels. He will star in the upcoming Amazon Studios film, Emergency, and will also star in the upcoming 2021 Amazon Prime series, Daisy Jones and the Six. Sebastian has exhibited performance works with Xirin in various galleries and venues across New York, most recently in their 2020 collaboration “White House” at A.I.R. Gallery.
Xirin is an Iranian, New York-based multidisciplinary artist whose work reclaims romantic tropes, emphasizing the ways idealistic notions of attachment cause pain. In her work (composed of performance, painting, video, and installation), she frequently uses the form of the duet to explore how larger social power structures locate themselves within intimate relationships. Through a series of autofiction, she investigates what it means to love men as a feminist within patriarchy. With her body often situated as the subject, Xirin’s work embraces intimacy, optimism, and romance as erotic, transgressive tools against social apathy. Recently, Xirin has performed at A.I.R. Gallery, the Jewish Museum, Knockdown Center, and Pioneer Works. Her writing is included in the permanent collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Her work has been featured in publications such as Pitchfork, Vestoj, and PAPER magazine, and she has recently participated in artist residencies at A.I.R. Gallery and A-Z West: Institute of Investigative Living. Alongside Kembra Pfahler, Xirin frequently organizes performance art events in New York, known as Incarnata Social Club. She received her BA from Sarah Lawrence and her MFA from Columbia University. She currently teaches online courses such as “Cruel Idealism,” a film, art, and performance studies class that explores the performativity of optimism and the taboo of radical utopias.