veronique d’entremont presents “The Table is the Altar”

Including accompanying collaborations with DA Mekonnen, Marcel Marcel, & Raqael Duarte Hunt.

Framed as a conceptual feast with many courses, veronique d’entremont’s exhibition “The Table is the Altar,” will undergo various iterations over the course of the month it is installed.  The title is a reference to roving feasts that were the centerpiece of spiritual practice among early Christians.  Coming out of the Greek magical tradition and the Roman suppression of the cult of Dionysis, early Christians cultivated “burial fellowships” by sharing meals in multifarious gatherings of non-relatives who would be responsible for tending to each other upon their death.  A queer family, of sorts.  When d’entremont first learned about these burial fellowships, it touched a nerve deep in them. An only child without offspring, the artist’s rumination on their own aging and dying process has undergone a series of reimaginings since the suicide of their mother in 1999 and recent passing of their father in 2021. 

SCHEDULE OF EVENTS:

Over the course of one month, the table at the center of the exhibition will be a platform for three separate installations–each a symbolic body undergoing the process of consumption.  There will be a public viewing each times the body on the table changes form, as well as two additional gatherings, making for five total “courses” to this conceptual feast:

Programming:

1. FIRST COURSE: Saturday, Sept 23, 5-8pm - "The Table is the Altar" Exhibition opening reception

2. SECOND COURSE: Sunday, Sept 24, 2-4pm - “But Then Who Will Bury My Bones (burial fellowship)” co-facilitated with DA Mekonnen

3. THIRD COURSE: Saturday, October 7th, 4-7pm - "Guts4Guts" reception (collaboration with Marcel Marcel)

4. FOURTH COURSE: Saturday, October 14, 2-4pm - Ancestral healing ritual (In collaboration with Raqael Duarte Hunt)

5. FIFTH COURSE: Sunday, October 15 2-5pm-  Exhibition closing reception, and “Transmission Session” with DA Mekonnen.  “A chime, then silence.  A low, long tone on a saxophone, then another. These build. For twenty-one minutes and one second, together we will enter a liminal space.”

“The Table is the Altar,” will be centered around a kitchen table, surrounded by three chairs from d’entremont’s childhood home.  On either side of the table will hang two “grave rubbings,” that  the artist made by tracing the contours and textures of furniture in their late father’s house.  Over the rubbings, d’entremont has transcribed portions of letters left behind by their father, giving instructions for what to do upon the potential deaths of himself, the artist’s mother, and the artist themselves–age 15 at the time the letter was written.  The letters are painted in with an ink similar to that which makes medieval manuscripts so difficult to preserve–a highly acidic ink that gradually eats away at the paper or fabric on which it is written.  

The “first course” of this conceptual feast will feature the central table overflowing with worm compost and worms.  Over the course of a month, the worms have been consuming a medical directive that the artist’s father asked that they sign a few days after their 18th birthday, mandating the conditions under which the artist should be permitted to die. During the second course, “But Then Who Will Bury My Bones” will be a gathering of burial fellowship in which participants will be invited to reflect upon experiences, anxieties, grief and hope as we consider preparing for the deaths of ourselves and those around us.  The table, in the feast’s “third course” will feature “Guts4Guts” an installation by Marcel Marcel of SCOBY kombucha cultures growing in the sets of decorative china left behind by the grandmothers of both artists.  Participants are invited to join an interconnected ecosystem of consumption, destruction and reproduction. Recalling the Maenads – female followers of the cult of Dionysis who consumed fermented beverages to be freed from their earthly bodies and prepare for what they would someday experience in eternity – viewers will be invited to lift these vessels off the table and to their mouths, consuming the liquid that is in the process of consuming itself.  Participants will gather around the table once again during the “fourth course,” for an ancestral healing ritual, a guided meditation and writing exercise led by d’entremont and collaborator Raqael Duarte Hunt toward the work of ancestral connection and healing. The table will hold a bronze casting d’entremont created from a partially-consumed deer leg that the artist witnessed being torn apart by a bald eagle and vulture the first night they slept in their late father’s house. Over the course of the time d’entremont tended to the deer's body, it became a stand-in for their father, their mother, and even themselves within their evolving artistic and spiritual cosmology.  During our “fifth course” and closing reception, DA Mekonnen will conduct a quadraphonic experience of ecstatic saxophone, dubbed a “Transmission Session" by Mekonnen and d’entremont when they collaborated on a 2019 installation, “Her Body Becomes an Antenna, Transmitting the Message of God” in Los Angeles. 

“Being of Sound Mind.” 2023.

Composting worms, dirt, medical directive signed by the artist upon their 18th birthday, mandating the conditions under which they should be permitted to die.