Last weekend (Nov 14, 2019), Arts Fund AAA-AusArt Alumni, Caroline Garcia, hosted a Kamayan experience as part of the Creative Time – Summit X Dinner Sessions in New York. The evening included a Filipino feast that honored and celebrated Filipino cuisine and culture, whilst focusing on decolonization and a return to indigeneity by forgoing the use of eating utensils during the meal. Beginning with a ritual of handwashing, Caroline welcomed guests to seat themselves around a communal table on the floor before introducing the practice of how to eat kamayan, “with one’s hands”.
Caroline was supported by the AusArt Scholarship in 2018 to complete her Master of Fine Arts at Parsons, The New School in New York. She works across live performance and video through a hybridized aesthetic of cross-cultural dance, ritual practice, new media, and the sampling of popular culture and colonial imagery. Caroline’s next event will be Smack Mellon’s Horizontal Idol Conversation, held at Smack Mellon on Sunday December 15 at 3pm. The exhibit, which opened on November 16, includes Caroline’s 2-channel dance video work and features artists across many disciplines responding to idols and acts of worship in popular culture and society. No registration is required and the exhibit closes December 29.
