Times Square Arts, the largest public platform for contemporary performance and visual arts, is pleased to present Table Manners by multimedia artist Zina Saro-Wiwa for the month of November as part of the organization's signature Midnight Moment series. Midnight Moment is the world's largest, longest-running digital art exhibition, synchronized on electronic billboards throughout Times Square nightly from 11:57pm to midnight.
At 11:30pm on November 2, the eve of a critical presidential election, Zina Saro-Wiwa will host a special presentation of her Midnight Moment, inviting the general public to a Midnight Feast to launch her Midnight Moment month in Father Duffy Square. The Nigerian food will be presented in an heady atmosphere featuring a specially-composed soundscape of cicadas, nocturnal birdsong from the United States and the Niger Delta, Ogoni choral voices, plus speeches from her father, human rights activist, Ken Saro-Wiwa. The soundscape culminates in the solemn chimes of Big Ben at midnight when the screens revert back to the usual advertisements. The artist will invite others to join her in eating warm plantains and jollof rice as a communal gesture - a shared moment of sustenance with the eleven eaters depicted in Table Manners on the screens of Times Square. Any leftover food will be distributed to anyone in need.
Zina Saro-Wiwa's "eating performances" expand to larger-than-life proportions across the screens of Times Square every midnight in November. Featuring individuals from the Niger Delta region, Table Manners (2014-2019) is an ongoing series in which the simple act of consuming a meal is staged as a celebration of community, tradition, and a collective act of memory. Each work begins with the name of the performer and the contents of their meal; the sitter then consumes their meal by hand while training their gaze directly at the artist's camera. Candid and vulnerable yet undeniably confrontational, the works also raise consciousness around the socioeconomic and political troubles the oil-producing Nigerian region faces.
Saro-Wiwa's documentation style forces the viewer to consume the names and realities of these individuals. Table Manners not only speaks to the cultures and traditions of the West African community, but as the artist notes, "a powerful exchange takes place when one not only eats a meal but watches a meal being consumed. One is filled up with an unexplainable and potent metaphysical energy that we normally pay no attention to. I am interested in the story that is fed inside the viewer of each performance." The series is primarily, for Saro-Wiwa, about place and power. The act of eating and consuming the food drawn from the land renders a quotidian action into a ceremony of import and ownership over cultural identity, firmly placing its subjects back into a landscape from which they have been displaced through global extractive forces.
"I'm really pleased to be showing this work in the month of November. Prior to the coronavirus pandemic it was to be August, but this month is portentous. It is a momentous time in America's history. A war for the country's soul is taking place with this election. It is also the 25th anniversary of my father's execution. A man who fought for the rights of our land and people not to be despoiled by Big Oil and an oppressive military regime. This work Table Manners is about coming together. About communing. About respect for one another and respect for the land. Table Manners appearing as the Midnight Moment is a special curatorial opportunity. It suggests the magic of the Midnight Feast which is the inspiration for my opening night performance. My hope is that people can come together - socially distanced of course - and commune with not only the people of Ogoniland and Port Harcourt in Nigeria who I have filmed, but also with each other. To look each other in the eye and just be. This is a time to see humanity in each other and to encourage civil discourse without resort to violence or ad hominem attacks. The sounds of night birdsong and cicadas permeating Times Square designed to reset and connect us with the vibration of the ether. This Midnight Moment is an opportunity to come together and enjoy a simple meal. To find wonder in simplicity and directness. An antidote to the war on reality that abounds around us. It's also for New Yorkers to grieve loved ones that have departed whilst imagining better times ahead," said Zina Saro-Wiwa.
