NARANJO 141 is pleased to present Rot & Ritual, a two-artist exhibition of works by Lindsey Lou Howard and Thérèse Mulgrew. This will mark both the artist’s first presentation in Mexico. 

The works in Rot & Ritual are concerned with food’s myriad functions: as a medium for social gathering, where families, friends, and the newly acquainted forge substantive connections; as an object, disseminated in highly-processed packaging by distribution plants and social-media influencers; as a commodity that reinforces preconceptions of social class; and as a substance with elusively spiritual properties, not just in its association with the eucharist, but in its ability to usher us into a ritual state in which a mindfulness of the cycle of life and death, of organic growth and decay, is close at hand.

Howard’s ceramics emerge from a recognition of the way food has become divorced from its original purpose. On digital newsfeeds, spectacular images of decadent dishes have cultivated a culture in which food is as much an object as it is a source of nutrition, while in food processing plants worldwide, pesticides and preservatives stretch the longevity of foodstuffs to that of plasticine. Utilizing a ceramics process that closely parallels the process of good-old-fashioned baking, Howard satirizes food’s distorted role in contemporary life, creating works that raise table-sets into theatrical spreads.

Mulgrew’s paintings are drawn from the ritual of the dinner party, in which food serves as a canvas for noir-ish narratives of vulnerability and obfuscation. Beginning with dramatically lit photographs, Mulgrew translates the shimmering silvers, and alluring red backdrops that play host to the breaking of bread with her near photorealistic handle of oil-paint. For the works in Rot & Ritual, Mulgrew broke from her usual process of studio photography and scoured Mexico City for traces of the latent spirituality that undergirds her work.

Culled from familiar scenes— within dining rooms, restaurants, dumps, and on large and small screens— the works in Rot & Ritual allow the viewer to see the multifaceted functions that food and its accoutrements have come to possess: At once decorative distractions and symbols of community , food serves as a harbinger of mysticism and connection in our increasingly consumptive lives.

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