National Bitter Melon Council

Special Project with the Boston Center for the Arts

April 18, 2008–June 15, 2009

Bitter Barter
What would you barter for a Bitter Melon?

Bitter Barter was that asks visitors to assist the Council in our qualitative appraisal of the value of Bitter Melon through a system of bartering. Each visitor was encouraged to take a Bitter Melon and exchange it for something that they feel is of similar value, leaving that thing behind on the white gallery pedestal. Just as the true “market value” of something is determined by how much the market is willing to pay for it, the NBMC will determine the value of Bitter Melon by evaluating what is bartered for it.

Bitter Barter seeks the quality of the value of Bitter Melon. Our research goal is to evaluate how people value Bitter Melon based what they leave behind. Bitter Barter utilizes a composition of food, emotion, and flavor to understand the contributory value of these components to Better Living through Bitter Melon.

Home Office
A comforting contradiction: home office.

For the staff of the Mills Gallery, the NBMC's Home Office was an invitation to revel in (and reveal) the bitterness lived in the contradiction in terms of home and office. For the duration of the Artadia exhibit, the NBMC Home Office at the Mills Gallery had office hours, and the NBMC Native Informant, Union Leader, and Information Regulator also held office hours each week where you can join them in Better Living through Bitter Melon.

To celebrate the bitterness of speaking with an accent, Native Informant Jose Luis Blondet made you listen to his lines in a play he performed in English in June, 2008. The script was based on Aby Warburg’s lecture on the Pueblo Indians and is a desperate call to embrace mythical and symbolic thinking. People were encouraged to correct his pronunciation and tasted a sample of Bitter Melon while listening to him.

Information Regulator Nova Benway's project explored the bitterness of arts professionals, who work "publicly" yet within a highly insular world – and the reciprocal bitterness of an often confused audience. She articulated this bitterness by having coffee and Bitter Melon with personal friends and colleagues in a public area of the gallery throughout the run of the show.

Union Leader Nathan McBitter is an artist who has put off making work in order to be an effective 9-5 employee. He momentarily subverted the bitterness of being an artist/employee through his affiliation to the NBMC. He stole 120 minutes a week throughout the duration of the show to advance an artistic project that has been sitting in his drawer for a long time. Mr. McBitter was aware of his job duties, and he bitterly worked additional hours to compensate his employer for stealing time from his precious artistic life.

The NBMC Liaisons (Sadie Howe, Rebecca Thorndike-Breeze, Claudia Huang, Delphine Eychenne) presented the National Bitter Melon Council during the duration of the exhibition.

Artadia Boston 2007 featured the works of ten Boston-based artists selected last year by distinguished curators from around the United States through Artadia’s rigorous jury process: Hannah Barrett, Gerry Bergstein, Xiaowei Chen, Jane Marsching, Helen Mirra, The National Bitter Melon Council, John Osorio-Buck, Vaughn Sills, Mary Ellen Strom, and Stephen Tourlentes. The awardees were drawn from a record applicant pool of nearly 700 Boston-based artists, and chosen by a nationally recognized jury comprised of Pieranna Cavalchini, Curator of Contemporary Art at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum; Michael Darling, Contemporary Curator at the Seattle Art Museum; and Rene de Guzman, now Senior Curator, Oakland Museum of California.