EXHIBITION OPENING

NEVER ON OUR PLATE

Thursday October 20, 6-9pm

Alexandra Ben-Abba

Curated by Rebecca Pristoop


Repair the World

  808 Nostrand Ave.

  Brooklyn, NY 11216

Picture

This third iteration of Ben-Abba’s “Always on Our Plate” series directs her attention towards the international refugee crisis and considers historical and contemporary displacement. Motivated by her own identity as a Jewish descendent of displaced people from Slovakia, Germany, and Lithuania, the artist titles her installation Never on Our Plate. The exhibition presents sculptural assemblages of plates, bowls, utensils, and cups from an interac- tive meal she staged at A.I.R. Gallery, New York on October 7, 2016. Assem- bled with found materials, scraps, and place settings left over from previous meals, Ben-Abba highlights the lack of material comfort refugees endure.

The sculptural assemblages exhibited at Repair the World are a new method of display for the artist. While previous exhibitions presented documentation of her series through video and installation of individual objects, or by staging the meal itself, this exhibition presents the transformation of an event into composite sculptures that take on the compositional questions of painting. Much like Daniel Spoerri's “snare-pictures," Ben-Abba affixes the remnants of her meals onto boards in relationship to their abandonment on the dinner table. In a single object Ben-Abba loops the experience of experiencing loss.

Press Release.pdf

This event was made possible through the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation's #MakeItHappen initiative

Additional support from Asylum Arts