Meet Me at the Dinner Table
Three audio-recorded voices are heard over a dinner table but any physical clues of who these individuals are remain absent.
The materiality of this sound installation reflects on the complicated detached memories of diasporic communities from their food systems due to effects of migration, ecological shifts in food production, or recipes lost in time. Each voice yearns for experiences they no longer have access to—and their desires speak volumes.
These memories are remnants and wishes that the same experiences would return.
The recordings that make up this work are shared by participants from diasporic communities during conversations with the artists. The intent is to touch upon mutual experiences of various communities as they bond over differences, similarities, stories, longings and hope. However, the artists wish to avoid essentializing such stories, which are diasporic tropes, by oscillating between sharing, refusal, and (in)visibility. This installation is an attempt to preserve what once was; to create a reflective space where we can be found.
"Is that what art is? To be touched thinking what we feel is ours when, in the end, it was someone else, in longing, who finds us?" - On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous, Ocean Vuong
