“Red Food: songs of eros, death and transformation”. Part of the series “Singing with Architecture”.
Performance in honour of friends who are the widows of recent trans suicides. I sing to people at their table as though in conversation, while serving them a meal of red foods (hot borscht, pumpernickel, red fruit platter of pomegranate, raspberries, strawberries, red apples, cranberry juice) garnished with edible gold flakes. A zine was provided with translation and context for each song, and transcription of dream our mutual friend had about Flo. (at “The Artists Soup Kitchen” January 2012, on the death anniversaries of my father and my beloved friend Flo McGarrell, my first time performing in Toronto since I began masculinizing my appearance.)
“Performing a capella and a repertoire of songs in Yiddish, Aramaic and Hebrew from Eastern Europe, Medieval Spain, and Central Asia, Tobaron traversed the space singing either big and loud to fill the café space, or more directly and intimately to individual people, while they ate a menu of red food garnished with edible gold.” – (The Artists’ Soup Kitchen curatorial team)
Exhibition History:
2011 “The Artists Soup Kitchen”
Publication History:
Tobaron Waxman’s Red Food: Jewish Ritual, Mourning, and Queer Utopia. Kobrin, Haley. 2022, Refract