Neighborhood to Watch

A new biennial looks to put South Philly artists on the map — and the calendar.

by A.D. Amorosi

Michael T. Regan THAT'S NICE: Barat hopes her new artisan showcase will make benefit glorious neighborhood of South Philly. (CLICK IMAGE FOR LARGER VERSION)

The string had hardly come off the braciole of the Italian Market Festival when fliers started popping up for a South Philly Biennial to be held under the watchful gaze of Frank Rizzo's mural on Ninth Street.

Though the area's avant-garde artists have long made themselves known, they've hardly formed a united front until now — until Athena Barat gathered them under her umbrella for her inaugural Biennial.

"My goal in this event — pretty much my whole life — is to introduce different groups of people to one another, show them realities they aren't accustomed to, allow them to come up and sniff, take their picture with it, have a personal experience with something new," says artist and organizer Barat.

The South Philly Biennial, the first gathering of the area's like-minded artisans, is promised to be a regular event. Think of it as the Whitney Biennial slathered in DiBruno Bros. mozzarella. The idea is to raise a flag over South Philly's contemporary avant-garde scene with the participation of its biggest guns — painter Ryan Trecartin, poet/book procurer Molly Russakoff, galleries such as Bobo's on 9th, Brandon Joyce of Athenaeum fame, Plastic Little videographer Lindsay Kovnat, Club Lyfestile, Liz Rywelski. South Philly is crucial to the proceedings. Barat, 26, and her fellow artists identify with the area; it's still unfettered by commercial "arts" lodgings in a way that Northern Liberties isn't. South Philly is as raw and in-your-face as some of the work promised for the Biennial.

"I'm not interested in the passive observer. I want everyone in the pool," says Barat. The beauty of an event like this is the chemical reaction Barat foresees taking place once all the elements are in place. "I can't say exactly what will happen, but it will be safe, family-friendly and entertaining."

There'll be Kovnat's papier-mâché tree and a television playing her videos, and Trecartin in the guise of "Goallana Roomtone," a "reconstructive hair extension guru" providing makeovers and consultations. There'll be sculptors like Brian McKelligott showing off decorative origami-like kites, musicians like Dave Fishkin's saxophone student brigade, groups like the Random Tea Room presenting the Gong-Fu style of brewing and serving, plus so many interactive installations, you'll feel as if you've wandered into a new neighborhood.

"You must be at the banquet in order to feast, and my art encourages people to step up to the dinner plate," says the organizer of the Biennial. The same thing goes for this event. Though Barat's day as a presenting artist will encompass singing and planting trees in concrete to outline the Biennial space and exhibit some of her painterly work upon, she'll be there, too, as front person for her parents, Chandri and Gary Barat, and their Barat Foundation, the event's primary sponsor.

According to its Web site, the Jersey-based Barat Foundation creates interactive educational experience based on cultural exchange. The foundation runs programs in Newark, N.J., and Provence, France. It's the Barat family story that fuels Athena's fire.

Gary Barat's the co-founder of Legume Inc., a company formed in 1981 with the goal of transforming tofu beyond white soy bricks. You have Legume to thank for items like nondairy tofu-based frozen lasagna, chocolate products and TV dinners. "My sister [Ariana] and I grew up traveling the country on the natural-foods industry trade-show circuit," says Athena, who used to drive in dad's white Volvo, which looked like a chunk of tofu and had a license plate that read TOFU.

Things changed when, during a life insurance checkup, Athena claims that her father discovered he was HIV-positive due to complications during an open heart operation. Life shifted for the Barats, but in a positive way. "My parents always shared vision bigger than themselves. Since Legume was my dad's tofu love, after his illness, they went with my mother's love, which is France — she studied at the Sorbonne — and my dad returned to photography." (The Barats sold Legume to Kedem Food Products in 1995.)

Crazy about education, they created a foundation to study and learn French in Provence and introduce culture and contemporary arts to high schoolers. Gary, too, founded the Newarc creative recovery/art therapy program at Integrity House rehabilitation center in Newark. "The connection between the two places (Newark, Provence) is really just the bridge between my parents — they each just followed their bliss and that's what came out of it," says Athena.

South Philly came into the picture when she visited Brandon Joyce's now-defunct performance space, the Athenaeum. The off-Passyunk Avenue warehouse was a madhouse of lo-fi bands, Lost Film Festival presentations and impromptu classes in philosophy and algebra. "The place was infiltrated with magic from the get-go," says Athena, who counts Joyce's new Philadelphia Institute for Advanced Study as an associate of the Biennial. It was her own Pink House gallery, where she moved in late 2005, that hosted several of Joyce's shows in the wake of Athenaeum's closing in September of that year. In South Philadelphia, she found an area raw and come-as-you-are. "South Philly's uninterested in airs. Other parts of Philly feel self-conscious. West Philly has a university-intellectual, politically motivated staunchness, stuffy and repressed. North Philly's shiny loft reality feels too prefab and dishwasher-safe. There's an attitude in South Philly that just wants to get to the point."

Athena finds poetry in the open-air market and the hustle that takes place within it, an energy that's frontal and honest.

The Barat Foundation is an organization that, like Athena's brand of interactive art — walk-through installations or performances — facilitates an open forum for what she calls the "virility of freedom."

"My performance venues have ranged from the underground noise scene to a local Dunkin' Donuts. My work is born of the ethics to mesh deliberate art and the unsuspecting public sphere." While this Biennial celebration includes a latex toxic bog, a spiral mural you can enter and neon costumed antics from Sweatheart and Club Lyfestile and so much more work of her own and her friends, Athena sees her Biennial as something else.

"I so love a parade, I made one up where lots of people could just show up. I want to create a space to celebrate an individual's vision where people aren't intimidated to come around, say hello and ask a question, a space where it's OK to put it out there and OK to make a mistake."

(a_amorosi@citypaper.net)

South Philly Biennial, Sat., May 31, noon to 6 p.m., outdoors at Ninth and Christian streets, southphillybiennial.blogspot.com.