Harry Katz's Milk-Fed Porkchop
2020
Gabrielle Constantine grew up in the restaurant industry and feels that it has become a defining factor of her identity. Her family is comprised not of blood relatives but of people that her parents met in and around the industry. Working in bars and restaurants herself she now feels the same closeness to the environment her family did during the 1970’s and 80’s. During Constantine’s family dinners there is always a natural progression of story-telling that arises throughout the evening. These stories are usually set in two places: Moriarty’s Irish pub, a classic Philadelphia staple, and Mel’s on the Hill, a Jewish-run Italian-American restaurant in Belmont Hills. Both of these restaurants have provided a family for her that consists of bookies, aunts, wanna-be gangsters, real mobsters, uncles, guys that sell fake purses from the backs of their Cadillacs, formidable women, and a mother and father. Through her memories and many interviews Constantine will collage these components into a detailed installation which will capture the lived experience of working in the restaurant industry in Philadelphia throughout the past and present.
*Originally scheduled for October 2020 at Vox Populi, postponed due to Covid-19
