MUTANT LEFTOVERS

Much of artist Thu Tran’s practice centers on mediated food: not the polished culinary culture frequently depicted on screen, but the improvisational, awkward, and even existential elements of contemporary home cooking. Many of her works, including cult TV hit Food Party, expose a fundamental strangeness that underlies the act of preparing and consuming meals, often deconstructing the very definition of food. 

In MUTANT LEFTOVERS, commissioned by the Museum, Tran (b. 1982 Malaysia; raised in Cleveland; lives in Brooklyn) unleashes a buffet of living amuse-bouches that toe the thin line between appetizing and revulsive. Constructed from 3-D models and photographs of Tran’s own improvised meals, the menagerie of leftovers-gone-wrong writhe, squirm, slither, and bounce across the Museum’s 50-foot-wide lobby wall.