Tellurian Dinner is a site-specific art installation by Sharona Franklin featured at the SFU Audain Gallery as part of an exhibit called The Pandemic is a Portal.
“Historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew. This one is no different. It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next. We can choose to walk through it, dragging the carcasses of our prejudice and hatred, our avarice, our data banks and dead ideas, our dead rivers and smoky skies behind us. Or we can walk through lightly, with little luggage, ready to imagine another world. And ready to fight for it.” –Arundhati Roy
Tellurian means related to the earth, or earth-dweller, and Franklin’s installation observes and venerates connections that are first and foremost of the earth. Composed of salvaged botanicals, pharmaceutical elements and construction-site remnants, melded together with animal-derived gelatin, the dinner settings are left to decompose over the span of the exhibition, marking a temporality in relation to both human consumption and biological processes. Join us for a virtual tour of this exhibit with description and slide show.
Sharona Franklin is a multidisciplinary disabled artist, writer and activist who has been based in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. Her work explores radical therapies, cybernetic craft, bio-ritualism, ecology, pharmacological, and social interdependence. Franklin’s practice coalesces discourses of disability, gender, class, and bio-citizenship into new kinds of mythologies. Through ontological study that utilizes natural, salvaged, biodegradable, and digital media, her work invites viewers to experiment with the links between knowledge production and healing methodologies.
Register for your VocalEye Zoom invitation by contacting info@vocaleye.ca or call 604-364-5949. Please let us know where you’re from and if you identify as a member of the blind/partially sighted community or as a sighted supporter. This one-time registration will give you access to all upcoming Virtual VocalEye events.
The VocalEye virtual lobby opens at 6:30 pm Pacific Time for some pre-show mingling with host Amy Amantea. The pre-show introduction will begin at 6:45 pm with special guest, cheyanne turions, Curator of SFU Galleries. The featured virtual tour begins at 7 pm. The tour is 15 minutes long and will be followed by further discussion, Q and A and a prize draw. BC residents will be entered to win one of two $20 gift cards to White Spot where you can enjoy a little Thanksgiving turkey, take-out or delivery.
Tellurian Dinner includes five poster-sized panels with text. The full text is included in this Word doc: Tellurian Dinner Poster Text.docx
