The word “extravaganza” gets bandied around frequently in this column—and indeed in the art world in general—but there really is no other way to describe the feast laid on by the Delfina Foundation’s Dagestani artist-in-residence Taus Makhacheva last night. The event, part of the foundation’s Politics of Food programme, took the predominantly Russian guests (plus Jennifer Higgie, the co-editor of Frieze magazine, and the institution’s founder, 88-year-old Delfina Entrecanales) on a grand historical gastronomic tour of the Russian Caucasus, complete with performance interludes, video clips and costume changes from the irrepressible Ms Makhacheva.
A procession of rustic dishes dating from the 19th-century Caucasian War (dried meats, bean stew, filled flatbreads, apricot porridge) kicked off this—yes—extravaganza, for which each guest was thoughtfully provided with a carved wooden “moustache spoon” (copies of an object in the Dagestan Museum of Fine Arts). The artist donned traditional costume and assumed the persona of a superhero chef with magical weightlifting powers, before changing into a demure blouse and skirt to serve up food from the Soviet era, when beluga caviar from the Caspian Sea was apparently so plentiful that Makhacheva’s family used it as a substitute for salt in mashed potato. That was how it arrived on the plates of the somewhat aghast Delfina gathering, washed down with Crimean champagne.
This was a hard act to follow, but the grand finale, representing “neo-liberal contemporary Russia”, rounded off the evening with magnificently blingy aplomb: a giant cake in the form of a Chanel handbag, specially flown in from Baku, was accompanied by cinnamon vodka served in carved-ice shot glasses and garnished with gold leaf. The guests downed their drinks and then smashed the glasses with gusto in Delfina’s courtyard. Gallery dinners will never seem quite the same.
