PROJECT EATS (est. 2009)
“Connecting art, agriculture, and life lived in the community” is the key tenet that underpins Manuela’s partnership with Project EATS, as told by the project’s founder, the artist Linda Goode Bryant. Intertwining sustainability and community-based food systems with Soho’s history as a home for seventeenth century colonizers and twentieth century conceptual artists alike, Goode Bryant created a dynamic “living installation” through both its behind the scenes composting initiative and informative window display.
Project EATS’ window display at Manuela is a site-specific artwork that tells the story of Soho as it relates to Project EATS’ long held beliefs. “It’s based on FOOD restaurant,” Goode Bryant says of Gordon Matta-Clark’s 1970s artist-run restaurant, which used to be nearby. Taking the restaurant’s legacy as a starting point, Goode Bryant’s multi-chapter installation pays homage to these artists who created “a food space for themselves… and buy in for themselves.” Considering the origin story of FOOD was the catalyst to unpack the very roots of food itself – with an emphasis on the importance of soil. “It caused me to think, when did it all start here? Lower Manhattan was the first settled area by colonizers in the 1600s.” In this display, the Project EATS founder presents complex questions about the city, its history and the active role of food and farming. “It’s an interwoven narrative that helps us understand and be aware of all the people that are often left out… it’s an experiment to see if it’s possible to transform a window into a place where people come to read, watch, listen and engage with stories about our shared past, present, and future.”
About the artist
Linda Goode Bryant (b. 1949, United States) is a New York based artist whose decades long career has seen her move successfully between roles as educator, gallerist, activist, filmmaker and farmer. Having received her Bachelor of Arts from Spelman College in Atlanta, Georgia in 1972, she went on to study art history at the City College of New York until 1974, later receiving her MBA from Columbia University in 1980. In the mid 1970, Goode Bryant founded Just Above Midtown (JAM), one of the city’s first galleries to show work by African American and other artists of color. Open from 1974 until 1986, JAM’s legacy was cultivated as a self-described laboratory and a place where Black art flourished; in 2022 JAM was the subject of a retrospective exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, New York.
Goode Bryant’s latest ongoing work is Project EATS, a growing network of community-based food systems that uses art, urban agriculture, partnerships, and social enterprise to sustainably produce and equitably distribute essential resources. Founded in 2009, Project EATS aims to increase food sovereignty by growing and distributing fresh produce in New York City communities that have limited access to healthy nutritious food while also providing residents with farm and culinary opportunities for employment and management at PE and other farms and culinary enterprises. “Nothing has been more fulfilling,” Goode Bryant says of this work, “because I think this is what art is. It is food and life.”