Lucien Zayan visited Frieze New York with a specific goal: finding art that examines the relationship between art and food, including shared humanity and social tensions. He curates the second edition of the NAFAS Festival in Tokyo, where nafas means breath or a sustaining force, reflecting the nurturing energy involved in cooking. Zayan became more interested in food’s history and anthropology, viewing food in art as highly political. At The Shed, he encountered an installation by Aki Goto featuring a glittery dentist’s chair and multimedia elements about childhood rituals, parenthood, and time. The work prompted connections to sugar’s importation from colonized nations to Europe in the mid-16th century and the way rising cavities influenced gastronomic culture.
"“I am looking for something very specific,” Zayan, the founder of the Invisible Dog Art Center in Brooklyn, told me. I had spotted him standing near a large abstract painting saying something about lettuce to a booth attendant. Zayan was searching for food. Art and food, to be precise - works that examine their relationship, shared humanity, social tensions - as he curates the second edition of the NAFAS Festival in Tokyo this September. In Arabic, nafas means breath or a sustaining force, and captures the nurturing energy that goes into cooking."
"Zayan developed a more intimate relationship with food in recent years, when he became more interested not just in eagerly ingesting it but also in understanding its history and anthropology. “I discovered that food in art is very political, maybe more than other types of art,” he told me. On the fourth floor of The Shed in Hudson Yards, where Frieze is on view through the weekend, Zayan found something to whet his appetite: an installation by Aki Goto at the booth of Europa involving a glittery dentist's chair and multimedia elements that reflect on childhood rituals of losing a tooth, parenthood, and the passing of time."
"That made Zayan think of sugar, imported from colonized nations to Europe as a novel ingredient in the mid-16th century, and how the rise in cavities shaped the gastronomic culture of that era. He wouldn't be buying works at Frieze (his husband has “forbidden” him from purchasing art this year), but for the esteemed curator, collector, and chef, discoveries of this sort are what make fairs worth coming to. What and how we consume seemed like"
Read at Hyperallergic
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