Dubai artist Lantian Xie serves up a tasty offering.
A time-based installation that focuses on food. (SUPPLIED)
Art is created to be experienced, but not many forms utilise more than one of the five senses simultaneously. The Mona Lisa indulges the sight, while the latest offering by L’Artisan Parfumeur is a treat for the sinuses. The likes of Gordon Ramsay have fallen to fame by treating taste buds, and Chopin is associated with aural pleasure.
Installation art is one of the few areas where artists can create a more ensconcing experience. Lantian Xie, the force behind art gallery Jam Jar’s latest project, chose this route. I’ll Be Back Someday addresses several senses in a way that is seldom seen in Dubai’s conventional art circles.
Xie’s previous work has been in video. He has graduated to perhaps the only thing more realistic than high definition – real life.
Approach his installation, and you are confronted by snake queues shaped by red ribbons, much as you’d find in an airport. The spectator passes these queues, summoned perhaps by the enticing smells of cooking, only to be stopped by a black shroud. The spectator must become a participant, interacting with the installation and lifting up the shroud to find: Xie cooking and serving stew and rice to all and sundry.
He is proud of his cooking skills. He mentions that he has been practising for over a month.
Xie’s entire installation is a study of barriers and the rewards of overcoming them. In the multi-cultural city of Dubai where we, proud of our plurality, still manage to treat anyone unlike us with healthy suspicion, his work is particularly pertinent.
In order to reach the artist, who is very appreciative of questions, one must negotiate obstacles both internal and external. The food is the facilitator. It sets the stage for the artist and spectator to interact and indulge.
The concept of barriers and reaching past them is not Dubai-specific, says Xie. He is a nomad who has travelled the Far East, Europe and the US before finally choosing to stay in the emirate. His art is informed by the complicated interaction of hostility and goodwill found the world over.
Xie is as curious as his audience about the outcome of his experiment. Creating art out of interaction, or interaction out of art, means every day promises something different. Xie believes his cooking will improve, while the relationships he builds with his audience will also change for the better as he gets repeat visits.
The installation is ‘time-based’, which is a complicated way of saying Xie will be at the Jam Jar, every single day of the week till the end of May, cooking, serving and chatting away to those who have seen past his defences. It may seem like much ado over a dish, but the piquancy is in the engagement, not the rice.
- I’ll Be Back Someday runs until May 28
[This is a review written for Emirates Business 24/7 and and can be found here:
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Conceptual art. yaaaaaaaawn.
Is it just me or does conceptual art appear to flog any fleeting blip of an ‘idea’ by the most affected means possible, much like spinnig the singular yard it has at disposal into a substantial Shetland sweater?
I think cartoons do that much better.
Conceptual art: my arse. (I could make an installation out of this!)