Taste's Safe Feast

Description:

Taste’s Safe Feast was a performance by Judy Radul presented at Western Front’s 1992 art auction.In the work, Radul delivered a monologue that explored self-censorship in response to offence taken at her earlier performance, Power Circus, with Andrew Wilson, presented at the previous year’s art auction. 

Taste’s Safe Feast culminated in Radul smearing chocolate letters spelling the performance’s title onto a canvas, producing a provisional “monochrome” that appeared to resolve the problem of performance’s ephemerality within an auction context. The twist however, was that this chocolate painting was not auctioned—instead, the empty chocolate box became the saleable object, underscoring the work’s critique of the commodity status of performance art. 

Video documentation is available upon request.