Red Flower Collective is a project, practice, and expanded view of the kitchen and the studio founded by art-historian, researcher Erin Montanez and artist, homemaker Tsohil Bhatia. The collective takes food and the labor of cooking as key tools in forgoing the sterility of the gallery exhibition space, the ‘NO FOOD AND DRINKS BEYOND THIS POINT’ of the art institution. The goal is to collaborate with artists-/chefs-/ and curiosities-in-residence and affirm queer and diasporic identities as they manifest themselves through food. Working through the model of the autonomous home gallery and make it function to its full capacity of hosting, feeding, and sharing, the collective explores the kitchen as a forum in which to receive generational knowledge and prioritize the recipes derived from this research.
The collective functions out of homes of friends who donate their kitchen to host meals and in the future, installations and performances; and has hosted six meals thus far, all of which have been open and pay-what-you-wish. With a rotating membership, the collective is interested in reframing the conversation of the complicated, participatory joy and aesthetics of sharing food by thinking through the nature of migration and replication in a global economy as well as the inherent relational qualities of sharing a meal.
Dinner#1
Hosted in Brooklyn in a domestic setting with 35 guests all invited via an open and free RSVP. The menu mostly consisted of food from different regions of India.
Dinner#2
Hosted in Chautauqua, NY at the Chautauqua School of Art Residency in collaboration with ceramicist Rahaleh Filsooofi and artist Meirav Ong. Most of the ceramics that were used to serve the food were built by the residents as a part of the community clay workshop by Filsoofi. The meal took its inspiration from Jewish, Iranian, North African and Persian Cuisines and was attended by 90 people.
Dinner#3
Hosted in Brooklyn in collaboration with our friend Molly Grund, her mother Grace Grund and brothers who prepared a South East Asian meal with influences from Malaysian, Singaporean and Chinese cuisines. Invitation was an open and free RSVP for 40 people.
Dinner #4 and #5
Fresh meal deliveries in Brooklyn and Queens geared towards delivering food to people sick with COVID or otherwise and those who were unable to have access to a home cooked meal. Over the two deliveries, we delivered food to 60 people.
Dinner #6
Hosted in Queens, NY in collaboration with Palestinian American artist and organizer Jenna Hamed, who welcomed 35 people into her home to share ancestral recipes from the Palestinian communitty that exists largely as diaspora.
