A Meal

July 8-10

This year LEIMAY uses HERE’s DOT as an exhibit space offering video portraits of mythical characters created for past RAW live presentations. From abstract beings, to seashell creatures and food nymphs this collection of video portraits gives a poetic look into the process of A Meal.

Parallel to this indoor exhibit, LEIMAY will host three different outdoor encounters with guests speakers, artists and community members for intimate audiences. One of the encounters will welcome audiences to participate in a storytelling recipe circle and Japanese book-binding workshop, sharing memories through food. Another will be centered in a conversation with Saada Amadu, Michelle Jackson, and Qiana Mickie, about the tensions of reconnecting with the land. A third encounter, Cultivating Home: Mapping Ourselves Through Food and Ecology, will feature farmer-artist Sawdayah Brownlee in an event of cooking, eating and conversation around food as a catalyst for understanding and reconnecting with home.

Due to the interactive nature of Storytelling Recipe Circle & Bookbinding Workshop with LEIMAY Ensemble Members Brandon Perdomo and Irena Romendik and Reconnecting with the Land: A Conversation with Saada Amadu, Michelle Jackson, and Qiana Mickie, all patrons and performers must show proof of vaccination to participate in person. All patrons and performers of Cultivating Home: Mapping Ourselves Through Food and Ecology with Sawdayah Brownlee, must show proof of vaccination or a negative Covid test.

Tickets

Click “Buy Tickets” below to RSVP for the Installation.
The Video Installation runs in the DOT from July 8-10, 2-8pm. Patrons can reserve a spot to attend the installation on the hour (i.e. 2pm, 3pm, 4pm, etc.)

Buy Tickets for A Meal Video Installation by Ximena Garnica and Shige Moriya on July 8-10.
Buy Tickets for Storytelling Recipe Circle & Bookbinding Workshop with LEIMAY Ensemble Members Brandon Perdomo and Irena Romendik on July 9 at 6pm.
Click here for tickets to the Zoom version of this event.
Buy Tickets for Reconnecting with the Land: A Conversation with Saada Amadu, Michelle Jackson, and Qiana Mickie on July 10 at 3pm.
Buy Tickets for Cultivating Home: Mapping Ourselves Through Food and Ecology with Sawdayah Brownlee on July 10 at 5pm.

Buy Tickets

Additional Information

Storytelling Recipe Circle & Bookbinding Workshop with LEIMAY Ensemble Members Brandon Perdomo and Irena Romendik July 9, 6-8pm

In this 2 hour hybrid gathering and workshop (outdoor and remote) at HERE and on Zoom, you will learn the basics of Japanese bookbinding while sharing recipes and memories through food. Each attendee will share a recipe and a story and take home a handmade creation: a book of recipes collected from workshop participants.

The gathering is ideal for anyone looking for a crafty and relaxing evening of reflection and communal in-person sharing.

For more details about participating either in person or remotely, please click here.
By participating in this workshop, you acknowledge that your recipe and story may be made publicly available and may be included in the development materials of A MEAL project by LEIMAY.

Reconnecting with the Land: A Conversation with Saada Amadu, Michelle Jackson, and Qiana Mickie
July 10, 3-4pm

When we think about food, what does it mean to reconnect with the land? Join this conversation (in-person outdoors or remotely via zoom) with food advocates and farmers who are building connections back to the land in both rural and urban settings.

Food systems and land tenure advocate, Saada Amadu, shares her journey to reconnect with the land as a farm apprentice after working in academia and the nonprofit sector. She will be discussing the physical, logistical, financial, and emotional hurdles she had to jump through to reconnect with the land with zero farming experience.

Food systems leader and speaker, Qiana Mickie and collaborative design manager, Michelle Jackson of Seeds to Soil, share their experiences and challenges in executing their visions of urban agriculture and land stewardship in the city.

Cultivating Home: Mapping Ourselves Through Food and Ecology with Sawdayah Brownlee
July 10, 5pm

An event of cooking, eating and conversation around food as a catalyst for understanding and reconnecting with home, featuring farmer-artist Sawdayah Brownlee.

A layered performance art piece that includes a harvest of seasonal crops for consumption, and artist preparation of ingredients, into a Gullah Geechee meal.

“We will eat and imbibe my people’s foodways and meditate on how tradition, displacement, migration, improvisation, adaptation give way to homemaking (in spite of place) and how critical relationships (experiences akin to a stone’s throw in a pond) can create experiences and spaces of liberation.” – Sawdayah Brownlee

Ximena Garnica & Shige Moriya | LEIMAY

Ximena Garnica and Shige Moriya are a Colombian and Japanese multidisciplinary artist duo. Their collaborative works manifest as live installations, dance and theater performances, operas, and sculptures that are presented in theaters, museums, galleries, and public spaces. Alongside their performative work, Ximena and Shige also invest their energy in critical research, printed and digital publications, and community projects. Shige and Ximena are the co-founders and artistic directors of LEIMAY and the LEIMAY Ensemble. The word LEIMAY is a Japanese term symbolizing the changing moment between darkness and the light of dawn, or the transition from one era to the other. Ximena and Shige work out of their home studio CAVE, which is located in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Garnica and Moriya are Creative Capital, National Dance Project, National Endowment for the Arts and Café Royal Cultural Foundation Award recipients, and Watermill Center and Chelsea Factory Artists in Residence. Garnica received the Van Lier Fellowship for extraordinary stage directors and was a Distinguished Visiting Professor at the University of California, Riverside. She has been on the faculty of Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Marymount Manhattan College and Sarah Lawrence College. Garnica and Moriya have been nominated for The Herb Alpert Award in the Arts and a United States Artists Fellowship. Her article ‘LEIMAY, CAVE, and the New York Butoh Festival’ was recently published in The Routledge Companion to Butoh Performance. Ximena and Shige's work is rooted in questions of being, perception, interdependency and coexistence. They look to expose the multiplicity of spatial and temporal intervals that exist within the body, between materials and environments. They are curious about what emerges when the stability of habits, affirmation of binaries, social norm expectations, and the crystallization of identity dissolve and expose the potentialities of being.