From the Curator
Dear Viewer,
Unless you’ve taken social distancing to the extreme, it’s probably impossible for you to deny hearing the word “essential” tossed around at least a couple times a day these days. Perhaps you’ve heard it so many times it’s started to lose its meaning, or alternatively, it’s taken on an entirely new one.
Eat, Sleep, (I Can’t) Breathe invites you to think about this. Each work featured within this international exhibition places individual ideas of what is “essential” in entirely new contexts. In addition to eating, sleeping, and breathing, there are the things we cannot live without, the things we are forced to live without, and the things we should live without. If there is one conclusion to be drawn from the following collection we hope that it may be this: that questioning the rationale behind our personal conceptions of what we can and cannot live without might be the most essential task at hand.
Enjoy the show and remember to check out our recent collaborators, Soup Canvas!
– S
Introducing SoupCanvas!
The Vacant Museum is proud to introduce SoupCanvas, an Instagram-based art benefit to raise money for the public school cafeterias who are stepping up during the COVID-19 crisis and serving hundreds of thousands of meals each day to students, families and other community members. There is still no plan for federal funding to support their efforts.
“we realized that artists in our community have been finding much joy over quarantine over mealtimes. Food provides a reprieve from the stressors of these strange times, but for many in America, this isn’t the case. That’s really what inspired Soup Canvas and what it hopes to achieve.“
In exchange for a sliding scale donation of $20 or more, donors to Urban School Food Alliance will receive a customized Thank You featuring a sketch of their choice from works on the @soupcanvas instagram page. To obtain a Thank You, donors simply DM @soupcanvas or email their donation receipt to soupcanvas@gmail.com, and indicate which image they’d like. Their Thank You will be sent with a high resolution image that they can print out or use on their digital devices.
The challenge facing the National School Lunch Program during this crisis:
The National School Lunch Program serves 30 million children school meals regularly at hundreds of thousands of schools. Now, with our country in crisis, the 22 million students who already qualify for free or reduced-price meals and rely on school meals for their main source of nutrition are now facing increased uncertainty of where and when they will get their next meal.
To date, school food programs are accruing a $40M deficit EACH WEEK
Donate to National School Lunch Program HERE. Follow SoupCanvas HERE.
Look out for some work by the artists of SoupCanvas within the exhibition below!
Lauren Shantall
Cape Town
Domestica
50 x 70cm
http://www.laurenshantall.com @laurenshantall
During lockdown, my gaze has by force turned inwards, to scenes of every domestic life: my husband, our child, eating, cleaning, talking, finding ways of being within confinement. As a parent by choice, the narrowing of the pre-child field of activity is entered into willingly; yet the added restrictions of the coronavirus lockdown have added a layer of complexity and are begrudgingly tolerated due to the understandable necessity of flattening the curve. This flattening has sharpened other things into peaks, and the essentialness, the dearness, of the everyday is magnified in these paintings. They are about how critical it is that being together be life-sustaining, and precious.
Sylvie McClelland
San Francisco, California, United States
Supplication to Longing I & III
Oil on canvas, both 5″ x 7″
https://www.sylviemcclelland.com/ @littlegreenparrot
When the pandemic first started, we feared coming into any contact with each other, even sometimes shying away from the touch of people we lived with. Outside interactions brought with them a lingering doubt and analysis of normalized movements – a touch of the shoulder in reassurance, an embrace between friends, how close your hands come to the checker or delivery person. Some of us have gone these four months without any human touch at all and so with these pieces I wanted to speak to our often internal conversation with this longing for touch – how something so essential and natural has been as taken for granted as the oxygen provided by plants, and is now a verboten unspoken need and desire for so many.
Onofua Dennis
Lagos, Nigeria
Eventide Rest, Nature call, wilderness of the prophet.
Charcoal on card and Acrylic on canvas.
@dennisonofua (Facebook: Onofua Dennis Denlight Twitter: Onofua Dennis)
Art is a Truth inform of lies, it takes sincerity and diligence to uncover it. The piece of art “eventide rest” produced in both painting an drawing, depicts a lady who had a stress full day , as she returns back home in the evening, nature tells on her that her body needed rest and a little sleep before venturing into any other activities such as cooking and eating. Hence this indicates that, sleep is essential to flesh and blood, its a means of strength to ones brain to function properly for other daily activities.
Florencia Dell Fabbro
Argentina
Quarantine Records
Acrilic on paper
16x20cm
These artworks are part of a series called “Quarantine Records.” The idea is to portray some of the meals and photos that my friends and I sent ourselves via WhatsApp during the quarantine due to the Covid-19. Becoming part of everyday life by sending us photos of what each one is going to eat, or what one has had for breakfast, is a way of being close and accompanying each other in these difficult times.
Nicola Grellier
Stroud, Gloucestershire, UK
Consumption
silk, cotton wadding, wool 130 x 120cm
http://www.nicolagrellier.co.uk @nick_grellier
The ‘handwritten’ list of Consumption shows a certain kind of personal use which reveals multiple clues about food, cleaning products, medication and privilege. it catalogues and exposes contemporary excess and boredom; ‘getting’ and ‘having’. Repetitious (some say tedious) stitching communicates the routines, requirements, treats and medications needed to survive life these days. As it was finished just at the start of the pandemic, the context in which the piece can be read is altered, with rules about shopping and hoarding, the possibility of excessive drinking and self medicating, the need for isolation and self reliance. The unchecked consumerism that threatens the planet is suddenly itself under threat. The theme ‘eat sleep breathe’ speaks of the essentials of life, this work speaks about essentials and the opposite, of need and want, of how privileged western life elevates the ability to accumulate and promotes our dependence on the inessential. The dress is soft and appealing but is starting to fall apart.
Rachel Merrill
Roasted chicken with cabbage
click here to find out how to acquire this piece via Soup Canvas!
Mayya Cherepova
Sushi Burrito
click here to find out how to acquire this piece via Soup Canvas!
Yolande Heijnen
Toast
click here to find out how to acquire this piece via Soup Canvas!
Hema A Bharadwaj
Thali
click here to find out how to acquire this piece via Soup Canvas!
Follow Soup Canvas! : @SoupCanvas
Donate to the Urban School Food Alliance! : Donate Here
Yohanes Soubirius
Singaraja, Bali, Indonesia
Chat Sale
Pens And Watercolor On Paper
50 Cm X 50 Cm
My work is intended to convey a message to the public about the importance of selling off chat. In my work, I use several types of paper that I draw with pens and watercolors, then I scissor and stick them on a worksheet, then I contour the edges of the picture with yellow watercolors.
Ryan Courtier
England
Freedom in Nature
Collage, 29.7cm x 40cm
http://www.ryancourtierartist.com @ryancourtier_artist
Nature provides us with everything from the food that we eat to a place to rest and sleep. In our modern world globalisation blinds us with the invisible threads of industry and economy. Ryan is an abstract artist seeking to look through this tangled web of the world, to the beauty in it that also connects us. Ryan encourages the viewer to listen to the colours in his paintings, to get lost in the textures and forms, and hear their inner sounds.
Moriah Smith
Dallas, TX and Baltimore, MD
Laura Sleeping
@moriahtheartist https://moriahsmith.myportfolio.com
“Laura Sleeping” is a found plastic collage that depicts my partner Laura sleeping in a bed of grass. Flowers, rhinestones, butterflies and paper houses surround her face. For this piece, I thought about the complex juxtaposition of my relationship with Laura and my relationship with the changing world we live in. I see a future with her, but the state of the world makes me wonder if my dreams are achievable, and if the future we live in will support our queer interracial relationship. The future is terrifying, but I couldn’t live without Laura, because she makes the world better and my future better, more lively, and more exciting.
Molly Valentine Dierks
Fort Worth, Texas
Partum Series
Umbilical – 70″ by 68″ by 52″
Cradle – 65″ by 60″ by 39″
https://mollyvdierks.com @mvdierks
Through my practice, which straddles the realms of art and design, I deal with embodied (sense-oriented, experiential) and disembodied (alienated, post-industrial) knowledge. Installations from my studio merge the formal languages of technology and nature to explore evolving landscapes of intimacy and connection. The Partum Series are two anti-monuments that focus on interiority and shifting states of being. These were both constructed at Franconia Sculpture Park. Umbilical refers to the pink piece, which was constructed with found irrigation tubing in baby pink and blue, used to keep the land fertile in its days as a farm. Cradle (the blue knot) was fashioned from ductwork elbows, insulation foam, and outdoor paint. Both pieces reference labor – that of mothers and other essential workers – in nursing, construction, and other industries – that undergird and are often the invisible supporting structures of society. These were both a labor of love, fashioned spontaneously and responsively in the interstices of waiting for materials for my proposed public installation.
Karina Brzostowski
Dubai, UAE
Secret Garden 3
Acrylics on paper
46 X 61 cm
My works tend to capture a moment in time, a place, a feeling or a memory. It also reflects the relationship I have with myself, others and my surroundings. A theme central to my work is the idea of perception which is very personal to myself, as perception is heavily influenced by our expectations, experiences, and moods. How I feel affects what I see and as a consequence what and how I paint. For instance, when creating my Secret Garden’ s series, I used bright and unusual colors. This was a way to force the viewer to look better and rediscover places differently. It’s a call to open up, become more aware of our environment. How do we interpret our surroundings? Especially in a lockdown situation, I wanted to make what is around us more visible, more blissful, to keep us positive and hopeful regarding the future. Sit back and smell the roses.
Marion Smallbones
Cape Town, South Africa
Lockdown Essential Spaces
Bathroom, 25cm x 21cm, acrylic on canvas
Kitchen, 30cm x 25cm, acrylic on canvas
Passage, 30cm x 25cm, acrylic on canvas
These three paintings are from a series I’ve been working on during lockdown. The series is a visual journal, showing fragments of the quiet, more intense and heightened spaces of our reduced lockdown worlds. These paintings depict spaces, considered essential by many and often taken for granted, but which most people across the globe are forced to live without. During this time, painting itself has become essential. My way to ground myself and give myself space to breathe during this difficult and confusing time.
Rachel Matton
London
John Boyega
Oil on board 210mm x 297mm
http://Www.rachelmatton.com @rachelmatton_art
I have undertaken this portrait painting taking inspiration from both Yiadom Boakye’s work ‘Citrine by the Ounce’, 2014 and a photograph of John Boyega taken during his powerful Black Lives Matter Speech in London’s Hyde Park. For me I can’t live without freedom of speech, which this portrait symbolises.
Ritam Talukdar
India
Unsung Heroes
Digital
In December 2016, I visited Darjeeling in the North of West Bengal, India with a group of Doctors in setting up a proper Health Camp for the people suffering from various health problems due to the lack of health centers in those areas. That was the first time I realised that apart from air, food and proper shelter people also need proper health care so that they can survive.
Pia Cabanela
Los Angeles
The Taxmask
Acrylic on canvas / 8×10″
We are crippled by this pandemic as much as the fear of the overwhelming bills we are responsible for. I created this piece after talking to friends all over the world, worrying about the piling debt that comes with this current situation.
Lynn Foskett
Tarpon Springs, Florida
Aging In Place: The Conveyance of Memory
Oil & Cold Wax Medium, Collage, Assemblage Diptych, 41” H x 36” W x 18” D
http://www.lynnfoskett.com @lynnfoskettartist
For the past few years I have been interested in exploring memory. In particular personal memories: how we interpret them over time and in what ways we hold onto them. Memories anchor us in a myriad of ways. They are essential to how we define ourselves and our relationships whether past or present. Without memory, our ability to understand our lives and place in the world would be abstract to a degree of non-functioning. My submission, “Aging in Place: The Conveyance of Memory,” is a reflection on the four generations of women in my family through a chair that has been handed down from my great-grandmother to me. The chair is literally aging in place. Pieces of it have come apart, the veneer is blistering and it has been held together with twine while in storage. I have collaged old photographs of each of the four women, handkerchiefs and letters into the background of the two panels. The actual chair is attached to one and on the other, the chair’s negative space has been interpreted in bas relief.
Hannah Zimmerman
Cincinnati, Ohio
Quiet Hum, Talk in Place
Gouache on paper, 22 x 30 inches
hrzimmerman.com @hrzimmermanart
My work explores the space between internal and external activity. Working within the confines of my domestic spaces, I capture scenes that bridge the gap between physical and emotional experiences. “Quiet Hum, Talk in Place” depicts a moment of comfort as an armchair lifts and embraces the ambiguous crumpled form resting in its lap. In a time when uncertainty has flooded into every aspect of life, this painting reminds us that we could all use a little support and could also do more to support each other.
Doménico CV Talarico
Berlin, Germany
Beauty is Desire in Disguise #07
60 x 80cm
http://www.domenicocvtalarico.com @domenicocvtalarico
This paintings was left unfinished before Germany‘s soft lockdown. After several weeks instead of painting the blank face this painting was finished with a face mask to close that chapter for good. The title is „Beauty Is Desire In Disguise“ which gets a special meaning on this painting. All the unfulfilled desires Are yet to explore. The man wears a mask which makes it impossible to eat the cake next to him.
He is sitting in a room with an opening behind him, marking new memories to come.
Brecht Lanfossi
Nederzwalm-Hermelgem, East-Flanders, Belgium
mixed media, printed digital collage on canvas, 39,37″ x 39,37 ” x 0,79″
It’s a sad story knowing/feeling that Western society can’t live without status, money and/or power.
Costin Condrachi
Luxembourg
Cigarette Break
oil on canvas / 70×50 cm
@costin.condrachi https://www.saatchiart.com/costincondrachi
Central to the very act of living, our daily routine is build of a myriad of things we do unconsciously, places we pass through on auto-pilot, images we see without really looking or feelings that we feel without bothering to understand them. I believe all of this mundane aspects of life deserve to be documented and lingered on just a moment longer. Through the amount of detail and effort I put in showcasing apparently banal subjects, I’m looking to amplify the empathy in the viewers and force them to reflect more on the relations that make up our world and their lives.
Mario Pitanguy
Brazil
Isolation #9
Mix media (digital, acrylic) – 90cm x 60cm
Directly related to contemporary days, the so-called success brings a new look to what is really relevant to have a good happy life. Commissions and money are not enough, followers on Instagram is what you need to have respect and approval as an artist. Like a freak auction house, social media brings a new view about our own work, giving us, as artists the sensation we need more than whats is real to live.
So great to see – congrats to all the artists!
thank you so much for your activism and inclusion of artists from around the world – inspiring way to stay connected to the experiences beyond my door.
thank you so much for your activism and inclusion of artists from around the world – inspiring way to stay connected to the experiences beyond my door.
-Kassia