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DANIEL GALLEGOS AND JEROME WAGG

Daniel Gallegos started practicing art as graffiti writer and was actively involved in the San Francisco Bay Area graffiti art movement during the 1980's-1990's. He works with a variety of media including painting, drawing, watercolor, spray paint, installation and performance. One of the foundational principles of Gallegos' creative work is collaboration. In 2007, along with the international collective Artpologist, Gallegos explored the daily lives of Almaty visual artists. He has also collaborated with local youth in Almaty and Shymkent in a project sponsored by the U.S. Embassy in Kazakhstan.

Jerome Waag is a performance artist living in San Francisco who also works as a chef at Chez Panisse restaurant in Berkeley CA. He is currently collaborating with New Langton’s Arts on OPEN restaurant. OPEN restaurant is an experimental restaurant run by a collaborative of restaurant professionals as a way to explore the issues associated with the production, distribution and consumption of food. Set in an art context, it invites the creative participation of people interested in food and its politics to a discussion about the way we feed ourselves and cultivate our communities.

Gallegos and Waag will work with Zhanara Nauruzbaeva to create a project in Osh, Kyrgyzstan, that will explore one of the most mundane and yet central aspects of everyday life: food. Focusing on the bazaar, the main thoroughfare of social interaction and economic activity in Osh, they are interested in using the vernacular of food to initiate cross-cultural exchanges. They will set up a food stand where the performance of cooking and serving food will be a way to engage directly with Central Asians of different classes, genders, ethnicities and ages. Informed by social anthropology, this immersive practice seeks to share and collect stories that reach beyond food to social, political, economical and environmental issues.

Gallegos, Waag and Nauruzbaeva will be hosted by Tamara Kadyrbaeva, art historian and regional advisor to the Kyrgyz Minister of Culture (Osh, Kyrgyzstan).

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