Dinned Is Served: Performa 09 Begins

Formerly a food writer and party planner, Jennifer Rubell has recently endeavored toward food eventing, an invented media that has naturally garnered her a specific niche in the art world. At a 2007 event at Art Basel Miami Beach, Rubell—daughter of the Miami-based pack of collectors, and niece of Studio 54’s Steve Rubell—greeted guests with a deconstructed take on breakfast, featuring enormous platters of hard-boiled eggs, croissant and bacon, with only surgical gloves as service. On Friday, Rubell’s agenda was to provide sustenance to 500 attendees of the opening celebration of the fourth Performa Biennial, the vast, three-week performance art invitational founded and overseen by Roselee Goldberg that this year features 170 artists and 25 curators (not to mention not-by-invitation satellite performances). Rubell’s dinner included an experience that played out, in descending order, over three floors, and many of the art world’s most famous faces were faced with food and drink at its most conceptually liberated.

Read the full article on Art in America. Photo by Aimee Walleston.