July 7 – August 8. DULA: Tastes Like Home

DULA: Tastes Like Home
Commencement: Tuesday July 7, 16:00-21:00 (RSVP by clicking here)
July 7 – August 8, Thursday-Saturday 14:00-18:00

Nourishment and connection; a new flavor; a different world; an old memory; an ancestral homeland. Food has always been a bastion of resistance, another form of oral history that connects us to our traditions, ancestors, and embodiment, through textures and flavors. For DULA’s first installation, we share a taste of our stories and our motherlands. An invitation to mindfully address displaced resources and bodies as we ingest history in the form of sweets. Can the act of consuming knowledge through taste prompt us to readdress our place in society, by a broadening of our capacity to empathize, to finally form thoughtful solidarity with one another?

DULA is a diaspora collective based between Berlin and Los Angeles, we believe that care and soft power are revolutionary tools. DULA is Ash Baccus-Clark, Black futurist, speculative neuroscientist, writer; Alexis Convento, Pilipinx-American cultural producer, taste artist; Ludmila Leiva, Guatemalan-Slovak-Canadian multidisciplinary designer, illustrator, storyteller; Chaveli Sifre, Puerto Rican artist focusing on scent as a medium. dula.world

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Amid the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, new constraints are present. Our public program has grown from social closeness in the formats of encounters, workshops and interventions. We charted a course not to work with exhibitions, instead emphasizing the relations between art’s productive and reproductive elements.

With respect to everyone’s health, and abiding by current laws, we take a step back and look at exhibitions as the most convenient format at this moment. Exhibitions can be a powerful collective experience, but one of their constitutive powers is the contemplation of the artworks by the viewer, creating individual readings in shared constellations. It seems to be the best moment to use that capacity in times of necessary small gatherings.We welcome the format of the exhibition, which brings with it certain expectations. We look to the domestic sphere, which has become an especially important site of production in recent months, as a model for institutions, which always depend on reproductive labor. The domestic model also has many problematic aspects, such as exploitation and unrecognition of labor and rights. It is perhaps in the tension between its conflicts and possibilities where the power of the domestic lies. It is also where the possible paths for the reorganization of institutions can be uncovered.

Titled Maintenance! Domestics as Institutional Becomings, acknowledging the work of Mierle Laderman Ukeles, our series of solo exhibitions and online events for the next months will address the domestic from different vantage points related to institution-making. We are preparing a reader on the topic that will be launched soon as well. During this new program of exhibitions, the previous interventions will remain at TIER. In that way we’ll keep working on the space as an editorial device to be renegotiated, and an ecology of artworks, underlining its conception as an inner garden based on principles of cultivation.

Hygienic measures: The space of TIER is 100 m² total, allowing for maximum 5 occupants. Up to 2 guests and 3 staff are allowed inside simultaneously. For the events, please register a time to visit to ensure that you can enter the space (click here). We provide hand disinfectant at the entrance. Please keep the minimum distance and wear a mask that covers your mouth and nose.

Photos by Benjamin Busch