‘Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner’ explores issues of food accessibility

Azubuike Akunne grew up with a father who owned a pharmacy in Columbus’ Bronzeville neighborhood, recalling how as a child he observed patients stream in to collect medications for ailments such as high cholesterol and diabetes. In time, this led the youngster to consider the link between these prevalent health issues and the foods people consumed – an exploration that served as the inspiration behind “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner,” an expansive new art exhibition that Akunne created in tandem with Imani Mixon, and which opens at Urban Arts Space today (Tuesday, Aug. 13).

Akunne initially took a more science-based approach to these interests, studying human nutrition at Ohio State University with the intent of following in his father’s footsteps and becoming a pharmacist. But while attending graduate school in Chicago, Akunne found himself increasingly drawn toward the issue of food accessibility and the associated nonprofit world. “And so, it became more political,” said Akunne, who turned to art a few years ago as another means of exploring these kinds of issues. “I wanted to find a way to fuse together the artist and the health warrior, I guess you could say. … It’s being upset with the machine of food, and the marketing that goes into the foods we eat, and how a lot of money is spent keeping people relatively unhealthy. The new play of the machine is to package things ‘greenly’ to make you believe what you’re eating is healthy, but you’re still eating the same things that were bad for you yesterday.”

Mixon’s contributions are rooted in her journalism background and include among other things a physical platform that asks visitors to consider their own value (she dubbed the stage “I Am Newsworthy”), along with an installation she described as a “homegirl library,” which the artist outfitted with books by authors such as bell hooks (All About Love) and Jesmyn Ward (Let Us Descend). There’s also a section called “We’ve Come a Long Way, Baby” – a title Mixon adopted from a late 1960s ad campaign by the cigarette brand Virginia Slims.

“And the sentiment was, ‘You’re a woman and you can do everything a man does,’ but it’s a cigarette, so it’s not a healthy or sustainable choice,” said Mixon, who found herself returning to words such as ownership and community in conceiving of her contributions to the exhibit. “And because of the times and the sexual and civil rights movements, there were Black models that were used in the campaign. And as a Black woman … I thought it was important to think about how our image and likeness is used, and what ownership we have over the spaces we enter. So, that’s what I’m exploring. … It’s figuring out ways to blow up my work, which is traditionally long-form journalism, and then making it something else.”

The work by Akunne on display at Urban Arts Space similarly takes numerous forms, including sheet metal portraits, 3D-printed foods adorned with pearls and modeled on Fabergé eggs (a commentary on the high financial costs associated with eating healthy), and a video installation that splices news segments about food deserts and other access-related issues with clips from the 1967 film “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner.” 

Akunne traced the multifaceted pieces on display in part to his introduction to art, which occurred around three years ago at a maker’s space where he had access to everything from woodworking tools and welding equipment to 3D-printing technology. This allowed Akunne to experiment with multiple disciplines as he worked to find his artistic voice, which he described as an offshoot of a long-developed adaptability that he first uncovered while traversing the globe by bicycle.

“And those trips really taught me to be nimble and how to make stuff on my own when I was out in the world,” he said. “And I think that was the fundamental reason I started touching all of those machines [in the maker’s space], because I wanted to understand all of it in case I needed something in the future. If I needed to know how to build a house out of metal, because that was the only material left, it’d be nice to know how to weld. Or if something happened to me or someone I know and they needed a prosthetic, I’d be able to make one using 3D printing. So, a lot of it came from wanting to know I could survive with the materials available.”

In building out “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner,” Mixon and Akunne repeatedly stepped outside of their respective comfort zones, which is a lesson both hope visitors take away from the exhibition, in addition to an increased awareness of issues related to food accessibility. 

“I want to give people the courage to sort of blow their ideas out,” Mixon said. “It’s text on a page. Now, what could it be next? Could it grow? Could it go somewhere else? It’s taking that idea and then doing it at a large scale.”