Eat Drink Man Woman, Art Gallery of Mississauga, November 10–December 22, 2011, Curated by Tara Marshall

Shelley Adler, Dean Baldwin, Suzanne Caines, Larry Glawson, Melanie Gordon, Colwyn Griffith, Fiona Kinsella, Laura Letinsky, Kelly Mark, Chris Shepherd, and Cole Swanson. What do you call an exhibition of artworks that explores our relationships to food and to each other without mentioning the overused F-word? You borrow the memorable title of an iconic film, and you find a way to express it visually. The invitation to Tara Marshall’s 2011 exhibition at the Art Gallery of Mississauga near Toronto featured four icons: a hamburger, a beverage cup with straw, a male figure, and a female figure, a clever rebus for Eat Drink Man Woman. This is of course the title of the 1994 Ang Lee film. The film focuses on the relationships between a father, a widower and chef who has lost his ability to taste, and his grown daughters, who are desperate for independence. As Marshall notes in her curatorial statement, the gorgeous but sometimes less-than-tasty food that the father ritually prepares each Sunday becomes a metaphor for the broken lines of communication within the family. Food plays a supporting role, providing context, symbolism and sensuousness, not only subtext but also context for the story being told. Food, as Ang Lee demonstrated, is an expression of our way of being in the world. It is also, as the very existence of this journal demonstrates, a subject of increasing public and scholarly interest. When the Art Gallery of Mississauga asked Marshall to guest-curate an exhibition on food, she knew that food was a hot topic and the subject of a number of previous and existing exhibitions and installations (The Art of Food at Emily Carr Institute, Vancouver; You Are What You Eat at MASSMoca; Cake Britain, an ephemeral exhibition at the Futures Gallery, London; Counter Space at MOMA in New York; and Feast: Radical Hospitality in Contemporary Art at Smart Museum of Art in Chicago). Visual artists have been interested in depicting food for centuries, from the hyper-realistic grapes of Apelles, to luscious Dutch and French still life pieces (how can you resist The Brioche by Chardin?), to Claes Oldenburg’s celebrated soft sculptures of a hamburger and a slice of gooey cake. Food, as Marshall maintains, is inherently aesthetic and enticing. But how to go beyond the mere sensual satisfaction of food to create a more satisfying experience, something to stick to the intellectual ribs? For her exhibition, Marshall selected 11 artists from across Canada who use food and its depiction—and in some cases actual foodstuffs—to explore the role of food in contemporary society as well as its surprising ubiquity, not only as subject but also as context, medium, and message. Marshall wanted to move away from more traditional renditions of food and eating to engage with issues and ideas about where we eat, what we eat, and with whom we eat. Melanie Gordon’s photograph of an elegant woman sipping tea by the side of the highway (titled “Tea Junction,” and yes, many of the artists in this exhibition appear to be having fun) examines the rituals of eating and the dos and don’ts that shape our relationships to eating, even if the setting might seem a little strange (Figure 1). Laura Letinsky’s photos (Figure 2) show the aftermath of eating—the crumbs on the plate, the crumpled serviette—with a classical minimalism and austere light reminiscent of a Dutch still life (though no Dutch artist would have been content with such barren tables). Kelly Mark similarly transforms decorative collectible plates (rarely used for food) into strange sculptural objects by covering them and the plate rail on which …