Gayle Chong Kwan, Adonia, South London Gallery, 2006
A work celebrating and remembering food, desire, seduction and the senses, Adonia transported the bawdy ancient Greek festival, normally held throughout the night on unused rooftops of houses, to the South London Gallery for one night. Women were invited to stay the night and sleep in the gallery together to celebrate and mourn past loves, desires, and lovers and well as call future desires and loves.
Adonia involved making spice or lettuce pillows to sleep on, whether to arouse or dampen desire, making Inux birds which were installed at sun rise on the trees in the gallery’s garden, throwing and smashing small pots of germinated lettuce seeds from the top of a scaffold, specially installed in the gallery, to recording secret desires and stories of past, present and hoped for loves and lovers, in disguise of lettuce masks, created by each participant.
Adonia was an ancient Greek festival, a sensory celebration involving food and a metaphoric space for women to discuss, celebrate and lament unfulfilled or wanted desires using spices and food. A week preceding the festival, held in mid summer, women planted quick-germinating seeds of lettuce in pots. They were watered and fertilised until shoots appeared, when they were then deprived of water. When the seedlings began to die it was time for the festival to begin.
