The new exhibition at The Africa Center, Ezra Wube: Project Junction, couldn’t have been timed better ~ running during NYC Restaurant Week. This commissioned mixed media installation explores food “as a collective identity in its ever evolving state,” with the exhibition including a visit to some local, well-known African restaurants.
The commissioned works include animation, painting, prints and objects, with an opening reception on Thursday, January 30th from 7:30 to 9:30pm at The Africa Center, attending with free Registration.
In this exhibition, Brooklyn-based artist, Ezra Wube (b.1980, Ethiopia) focuses on the native origins, symbolism, historical and cultural associations of each dish, as well as related folklore, in the hands-on part of this exhibition which includes a visit to Teranga at The Africa Center, Cross Culture Kitchen, Le Baobab Gouygui, La Savane, Safari, and Zoma.
By visiting these specific restaurants, the artist ties together how African cultures and communities in America construct symbolic universes to reflect on their experiences of diaspora and home. The exhibition’s line drawings will hint at the figurative connections, tracing stories of the ingredients’ historical cultivation and global dispersion. Objects displayed within the installation recreate those found on the walls of the local restaurants.
Viewer’s will take home a futuristic takeout menu based on the artist’s conversations with the restaurant owners about dishes that they imagine will continue to exist in the year 3020 A.D.
For Wube, culinary tradition is a lens for exploring transformations in the relationship between Africa and America through the everyday lives of people and their food. “Through these layers of connected time and space—the past, the present and the future, the local with the global—I aim to highlight the global assemblage and continuous rejustification of African identities.”—Ezra Wube.
Ezra Wube: Project Junction will be on view from January 30 through August 23, 2020. The Africa Center is located at 1280 Fifth Avenue at 110th Street, NYC. RSVP for the Opening Reception.
If you’ve missed the Opening Reception and Walking Tour of Restaurants, you’re in luck – just around the corner from The Africa Center is the new and much loved Field Trip, where #RiceIsCulture, located on Lenox Avenue near 115th Street.
While you’re Uptown, join in the Uptown Feast during Harlem Restaurant Week, March 1-15, 2020.
Kick-off your New Year with Moroccan dance workshops at The Africa Center, held every Monday evening in February from 6:30-8:00pm.