Presented by
Nyeema Morgan
Forty-Seven Easy Poundcakes
Like grandma Use To Make
Exhibition Dates
March 14 – April 27, 2013
BRIC Rotunda Gallery
33 Clinton Street
Brooklyn, NY 11201
718.683.5604
bricartsmedia.org/contemporary-art
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Image: Nyeema Morgan, Forty-Seven Easy Poundcakes Like grandma
Use To Make (8 of 47), 2007
rec·i·pe
\’re-sə-(,)pē\
A set of instructions for preparing a particular dish, including a list of the
ingredients required.
Something that is likely to lead to a particular outcome.
Nyeema Morgan’s Forty-Seven Easy Poundcakes Like grandma Use To
Make integrates drawing (47 unique images printed on 8 x 5 inch index
cards), digital manipulation, and installation, as well as preoccupations
with food, family, and tradition. Morgan created the work over the course
of a few years by searching for pound cake recipes on the Internet, then
using a “rule-based process,” as she says, to produce the series of drawings.
She sequentially edited lines of recipes into one another, redirecting
word placement and negating superfluous passages and instructions. The
digitally generated marks and arrows used to edit and mix recipes create
a vigorous tangle of lines and movement over each image, a palpable swirl
of thought.
The artist employs her grandmother’s own recipe in the series, emphatically grounding it as a meditation on family history and mythology. Our
own grandmothers’ recipes for hallowed dishes – fried chicken, tamales,
apple pie, etc. – are always the best, and among the elements of our youth
that conjure the most visceral of memories. And they tend to summon a
sense of reverence. The perfection of a specific recipe reflects respect for
tradition, hard work, and repetitive mastery. Such values are now largely
abandoned, replaced by convenience foods, fusion recipes that combine
ingredients and techniques from disparate cultures, and especially in affluent, urban milieus, a high value on innovation and novelty. Morgan’s own
work in producing the drawings, obsessively reformulating and rearranging the recipes to produce 47 sequential images, casts the project on the
one hand, as an analytic examination of nostalgia and memory, and on the
other, as a quest for perfection and for the new.
The pound cake originated in England but is among the most iconic
of American recipes. By tradition, its ingredients include one pound
each of flour, butter, eggs, and sugar. By reordering, marking over, and in
essence, destroying the recipe, Morgan recasts it as a platform for creativity, revision, and questioning. In fact, I was drawn to Forty-Seven Easy
Poundcakes because of the ingenious manner in which she deploys such
a tradition-laden subject to evoke a range of contemporary issues – the
subversion of rules and authority; originality, appropriation and copying;
and domesticity, once a central site for female creativity. In undermining
the authority of the recipe, the artist reminds us that women’s “creativity”
prior to the modern era was largely proscribed – the recipe, the sewing
pattern, the sampler or the quilt, were all based on steps and techniques to
be followed.
Morgan has installed the 47 drawings sequentially in two rows along
the wall of BRIC Rotunda Gallery’s Project Room. In doing so, she produces a linear formality to the overall work, suggesting that it is to be as
much read as viewed. She has also covered the walls with a kaleidoscopic
manipulation inspired by Albrecht Durer’s 1515 Rhinoceros, the famous
portrayal of a then exotic animal based on descriptions, not direct observation. “Durer’s Rhinoceros is a work I’ve been sitting with and meditating
over for many years in my studio,” states the artist. In pairing the repeated
image based on Rhinoceros with these drawings, Morgan creates a densely
layered visual metaphor on issues of authenticity and truth in our era of
electronic reproduction.
Forty-Seven Easy Poundcakes can be read on varied levels. It is an
emblematic act of resistance and manipulation, a text-based conceptual
art project and a series of abstract, expressionistic drawings. The culmination of the work is a form of performance art; as an innovative act of
community participation. For the opening reception, Morgan invited
members of BRIC’s community – staff, interns, past curators, exhibition
artists, and social media followers – to bake one of the pound cake recipes
upon which the series is based and bring it to the opening reception to
serve to Gallery visitors. In this collective act of generosity, the artist gives
a nod to relational aesthetics1 while forthrightly returning the pound cake
to its original purpose – to serve a large gathering, provide sustenance, and
create a collective memory.
Elizabeth Ferrer
Director, Contemporary Art
BRIC Arts | Media | Bklyn
1Other contemporary artists involved with relational aesthetics (art that involves a social
circumstance or transaction, or creates a social event) have employed food. Rirkrit Tirajaniva’s Untitled (Free) was first performed in 1990 in a New York gallery and later repeated
at other venues. In this work, the artist prepared and served a curry ( for free) to gallery
visitors. In 1991 Félix González Torres (1957-1996) presented Portrait of Ross, an everreplenishable pile of wrapped candies that may be taken by viewers. In a twist on the concept
of giving, Brooklyn-based Annisa Mack staged Pies for a Passerby in a cottage erected in
front of the Brooklyn Public Library in 2002. Mack baked apple pies and placed them on
the cottage’s windowsill to cool, tempting passersby to steal a pie.
Bio
About BRIC Arts | Media Bklyn
Nyeema Morgan is a Brooklyn-based visual artist. Her artistic practice
explores the personal and cultural economy of knowledge through
familiar artifacts. She creates her work in a range of media and is inspired
by philosophical conflicts and cultural associations presented in everyday
encounters with images, objects, and information. Morgan received her
BFA from the Cooper Union School of Art, NY, in 2000 and her MFA
from the California College of the Arts, San Francisco. She attended the
Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture and has been a resident artist of Abrons Art Center’s AIRspace program, NY, and Aljira: A Center
for Contemporary Art’s Emerge 10 program, Newark, NJ. Her work
has been exhibited at Art in General, NY; Galerie Jeanroch Dard, Paris;
Romer Young Gallery, San Francisco; The Bindery Projects, St. Paul, MN;
Carol Jazzar Gallery, Miami, FL; Artspace, New Haven, CT; South Hill
Park Arts Centre, Bracknell, UK; and the 2012 New York Photo Festival,
among others. nyeemamorgan.com
BRIC Arts | Media | Bklyn presents contemporary art, performing arts and community
media programs that reflect Brooklyn’s creativity and diversity. BRIC also provides resources
to launch, nurture, and showcase artists and media makers. We advance access to and understanding of arts and media by presenting free and low cost programming, and by offering
education and public programs to people of all ages. Learn more at bricartsmedia.org
Exhibition Checklist
BRIC’s contemporary art initiatives aim to increase the visibility and accessibility of contemporary art while bridging the gap between the art world and global culture in Brooklyn
through exhibitions, public events, and an innovative arts education program at BRIC
Rotunda Gallery and around the borough.
BRIC acknowledges public funds for its contemporary art programs from the Institute of
Museum and Library Services; New York State Council on the Arts; New York City Department of Cultural Affairs; New York City Council members Mathieu Eugene, Vincent J.
Gentile, Sara M. Gonzalez, Letitia James, Brad Lander, Stephen Levin, Domenic M. Recchia,
Jr., Albert Vann and Jumaane Williams.
Additional support is provided by Astoria Federal Savings; Lily Auchincloss Foundation;
Milton and Sally Avery Arts Foundation; Barclays/Nets Community Alliance; Bay
and Paul Foundations; Bloomberg; Bloomingdale’s Fund of the Macy’s Foundation; Con
Edison; Robert Lehman Foundation; Lawrence W. Levine Foundation; and numerous
individual supporters.
Nyeema Morgan
Forty-Seven Easy Poundcakes Like grandma Use To Make, 2007-2012
Inkjet print digital drawings on index cards
8 x 5 in. each
The Dubious Sum of Vaguely Discernable Parts: Newsprint Tabloid, 2012
Printed newpaper
22 ¾ x 16 in.
I, Rhinoceros, 2013
Wallpaper: inkjet print on paper
Dimensions variable
Forty-Seven Easy, 2013
“Participatory installation” of 47 pound cakes
baked by members of the public
Image: Nyeema Morgan, Installation view of Forty-Seven Easy Poundcakes Like
grandma Use To Make, photo: courtesy of the artist