COURTESY THE ARTIST AND TANYA BONAKDAR
Today Chelsea’s Tanya Bonakdar Gallery posted a job listing on the New York Foundation for the Arts’ website seeking part-time paid volunteers “to help collect grocery lists from shoppers at farmers markets around.” Intriguing! A quick call to the gallery confirmed that it is all part of an ongoing project by Brazilian-born artist Rivane Neuenschwander, who has used such a list in her 2003 work Gastronomic Translations, for which she commissioned two chefs in São Paulo to prepare a meal from a grocery list she found in a Frankfurt supermarket.
Neuenschwander, who was shortlisted for the Hugo Boss Prize in 2004, has had work displayed at a slew of venues, including MoMA, the New Museum (she restaged that cooking work in 2010 for a dinner following that show), and the Carnegie Museum of Art. She is perhaps most famous for her 2003 installation I Wish Your Wish, a wall of ribbons silkscreened with wishes of friends and family. As inspired by a São Paolo tradition, visitors were invited to tie the ribbons around their wrists until they fell off, at which point their wishes were said to come true.
It’s not entirely clear what Neuenschwander is planning to do with all of these lists, but if you want to apply for the temporary position—who doesn’t love a trip to the farmers’ market?—head over to the listing on NYFA’s website.