Run time: approximately 60 min
In conjunction with the concurrent exhibition How We Work: Smack Mellon at 30, exhibiting artist Asia Stewart will stage a new iteration of her ongoing participatory performance, any experience with men and alcohol. The artist will perform as an object of service, appropriating the image of designer Allen Jones’ controversial “Women as Furniture” series. Using the table, and herself, as a site of exchange, she will lead audience members through a series of challenges related to power, service, and control.
Asia Stewart (b.1996) is a visual artist who uses performance as a pathway to image-making. Her performances, often durational works of endurance, unfold as social experiments that negotiate terms of agency and power with audiences. Introducing levels of risk into the performer-audience relationship, Stewart both demands and elicits audience members’ attention, engagement, and unease. Her performances almost always involve unpredictable exchanges, whether they are physical, material, monetary, energetic, or intangible. Stewart’s performances have been supported by organizations that include The Shed, The Flea, Franklin Furnace, A.I.R. Gallery, Silver Art Projects, Marc Straus Gallery, Marble House Project, GALLIM, The Watermill Center, and the Brooklyn Arts Council.
In the wake of her performances, Stewart creates autonomous works (photographs, prints, sculptures, and installations) that carry the essence of the original, live acts that preceded them. Her photographs, films, and object-based artworks have been exhibited at institutions across the United States and internationally at venues that include The Bronx Museum, A.I.R. Gallery, SAC Bucharest, Kellen Gallery, Mercury Store, Untitled Space, NARS Foundation, Goodyear Arts, and Anthology Film Archives. Her first series of prints is also held in the permanent collection of the Mint Museum in Charlotte, NC.
Image: Asia Stewart, any experience with men and alcohol, 2025, performed at JACK, Brooklyn, NY. Photo by Elyse Mertz.