Subtleties and Warnings: Power and The Edible Grotesque

To complement the exhibition and residencies that form part of The Politics of Food, Delfina Foundation hosts Subtleties and Warnings: Power and the Edible Grotesque with resident artist Candice Lin.

Resident artist Candice Lin’s ten-course banquet will present a contemporary take on the medieval edible sculptures known as subtleties — fantastical, bizarre, or illusionistic foods — and warnings, a specific kind of sugar-based subtlety.

In the middle ages, kings would commission elaborate tableaus to impress and intimidate allies, evoking wonder, awe, disgust, and fear through the ingenious dishes served: mythical beasts — unicorns, cockentrice, and other chimera, fashioned by sewing various animals together; pastries sculpted into ships, castles, and stags; edible foods made to appear rotten and cooked foods made to appear raw; and sugar figurines in the shape of political enemies.

Drawing on Tudor courts, vernacular Chinese cookery, and books and films including Satyricon, The Baron in the Trees, and Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Lin will stage a feast of discrepant bodies, dysmorphic forms, and warnings — all of them good to eat.

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