The Picnic
Photo: Margeaux Walter
Jodie Lyn-Kee-Chow
Mixed Media with performance
2017
“The PicniC” is a multicultural experience where people from all walks of life are invited to gather and converse harmoniously over fruit on a large quilted picnic blanket.
By incorporating the actions of a diverse group of people traveling with fruit and inviting the audience to participate Lyn-Kee-Chow hopes to emphasize the picnic as a shared multicultural experience. The fruits provided also tell the story of migration being that some are imported and handled by migrant laborers.
The work is inspired by the artist’s Jamaican grandmothers who were farmers and shared stories of traveling on foot for miles with their crops to market. The artist imagined their strength and endurance and honors them with the action of walking with the full basket of fruit on her head for all her picnic performances. The quilted tablecloth blanket becomes the ‘place’ where all could rest, feast on fruit, and congregate.
Highlight Video: https://vimeo.com/876594714
Photo: Corey Folta
The Picnic: Harvest of the Zephyr
2018
Mixed media with performance
By incorporating the actions of a diverse group of people traveling with fruit and inviting the audience to participate Lyn-Kee-Chow hopes to emphasize the picnic as a shared multicultural experience.
The fruits provided also tell the story of migration being that some are imported and handled by migrant laborers.
The work is inspired by the artist’s Jamaican grandmothers who were farmers and shared stories of traveling on foot for miles with their crops to market. The artist imagines their strength and endurance and honors them with the action of walking with the full basket of fruit on her head for all her picnic performances. The quilted tablecloth blanket becomes the ‘place’ where all could rest, feast on fruit, and congregate.
*This work was made possible, in part, by the Franklin Furnace Fund supported by Jerome Foundation, The SHS Foundation, and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.
Inspiration
Jamaican national dress
“Around the World” quilt pattern
Born and raised in Jamaica, the artist found Gingham plaid fabric to be commonly worn in Jamaica. So she wanted to draw this connection to the red plaid tablecloths.
Gingham, originally a striped fabric from India, was imported to Europe in the 17th century, and this stripe was recreated as a plaid pattern in the mills of Manchester, England. This plaid is incorporated as girls uniforms in its commonwealth, also the artist’s birthplace, Manchester, Jamaica, where she attended school as a young school-aged girl.
Process
It began with this drawing in 2009 after the artist picnicked regularly in nearby Astoria Park. There were numerous picnics going on but the artist visualized a giant communal picnic rather than smaller private ones.
After other iterations of this concept and years of experience with dollar store tablecloths the artist sourced these from all over NY City to make this quilted picnic blanket.
The Picnic: Harvest of the Zephyr
2018
Art in Odd Places: BODY
Curated by Katya Grokhovsky
14th Street from Ave C (Campos Plaza 1) to 10th Ave (14th Street Park)
New York, NY
Sunday October 14th, 2018 – 2pm- 6pm
Jodie Lyn-Kee-Chow accompanied by Vidho Lorville, Alejandro Challet, Joseph Sledgianowski, Anh Vo, Campbell Watson, Sebastian Arteta, Courtney Frances Fallon, Leopoldo Bloom, Dorothy Youmans, Dalmar Nation, Jai Hurdle
Photo: Corey Folta
The Picnic: Harvest of the STEW
September 2019
Who Takes Care of New York?
curated by Christina Freeman
Queens Museum, NY
Jodie Lyn-Kee-Chow accompanied by Jacob Cohen, Vidho Lorville Anh Vo, Dave Meinhart, Ashlae Blūm,
Joseph Sledgianowski, Leah Aron, Kim Jefferson, Jay Elizondo, Nicholas Petrizzo, Luisa Muhr.
Special thanks to the food justice Stewards of NYC such as Edible Schoolyard NYC , Smiling Hogshead Ranch, Sunnyside CSA, Hunter College Food Policy, the lovely curator Christina Freeman @freeman_christina , Queens Museum @queensmuseum for the opportunity, Pratt SAVI @prattsavi , @u.s.forestservice my stellar technical designer, director, producer, director of photography, Courtney Frances Fallon @cffunfunfun .
Read more:
Photo credit Chanel Matsunami Govreau
Photo credit Chanel Matsunami Govreau
The Picnic: Harvest of the Soft Sweet Sound
2025
June 28, 6:15-8pm
SHARED GROUNDS
Curated by
The Park of Barnie in Hunter’s Point South Extension
(near Center Blvd, between 55th & 56th Aves)
Long Island City, NY
Jodie Lyn-Kee-Chow accompanied by Trasonia Abbot, Julia Hsiao-Chu, Ronit Levin Delgado, Fitzmore Prince Codogan, Leopoldo Bloom, Justin Sterling, Vidho Lorville, Rose Malenfant, Anna Ting Möller
Shared Grounds is curated by Elina Suoyrjö (FCINY) and Meghana Karnik (Flux Factory), with curatorial assistance by Rowena Hurme. It is co-presented by Flux Factory and Finnish Cultural Institute in New York. Shared Grounds’ neighborhood partner is the Queens Landing Boathouse and Environmental Center and the graphic designer is Gonzalo Guerrero of Secret Riso Club, a New York-based artist-run space at the intersection of art, design, learning, publishing, printing, activism and community building. The exhibition is part of the pARTir initiative funded by the EU – NextGenerationEU, with additional support from New York State Council on the Arts and The American-Scandinavian Foundation.
Photo: Corey Folta
Jodie Lyn-Kee-Chow is a Jamaican-American interdisciplinary artist based in NYC. Her work has been exhibited at venues including Queens Museum, NY, The Wing Luke Museum of the Asian Pacific Experience,CA, Chinese Historical Society of America,NY and Five Myles, NY. Lyn-Kee-Chow co-authored Living Histories of Sugar in the Caribbean and Scotland: Transnationalisms, Performance and Co-creation, a project funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council and presented in Kingston, JA, and Greenock and Edinburgh in Scotland (2022). She is the recipient of awards including the New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship (2012), Franklin Furnace Fund (2017-18), Culture Push Fellowship for Utopian Practice (2018), and Queens Art Fund (2019, 2024). Lyn-Kee-Chow has also received theBronx Museum AIM Fellowship (2024), KODA Residency on Governors Island, NY (2023), Residency Unlimited, Brooklyn, NY (2023), Wave Hill Winter Workspace (2022) and is an inaugural artist fellow of Triangle Arts, Brooklyn, NY (2022). Recent recognition includes being shortlisted for Creative Capital (2022) and nominated for Anonymous Was a Woman (2024). Publications include The New York Times, Hyperallergic, White Hot Magazine, and Artsy.
Trasonia Abbott is a multi-disciplinary, non-binary artist from Richmond, Virginia. They graduated from Pratt Institute in 2020 with a Bachelor’s of Fine Arts in Writing and a minor in Film. Trasonia is passionate about community building through arts and education. In the summer of 2020, they came together with some neighbors to found Queens Liberation Project (QLP), a mutual aid group mostly involved in resource redistribution events. In 2021 they curated and hosted a 3 night series of talks surrounding blackness and the future of art and activism after 2020, for Flux Factory’s Rhizome Project. The series ended with the Celebration of Black Life Cypher, bringing together black artists to showcase their works. In 2021, Trasonia participated in the Abolitionist Youth Organizing Institute run by Project NIA and worked with fellow artist Ada Chen to put together the first Queens Solidarity Festival, which brought together Black and Indigenous lead organizations, artists and community with free food and a day of workshops and performances. Current projects include a mixtape centered on processing state violence, the planning of the second iteration of the Celebration of Black Life Cypher, as well as organizing a Coat Drive with QLP that will benefit the women staying at the Radisson Hotel Women Shelter in Jamaica, Queens.
Leopoldo Bloom is an experimental filmmaker who works in photography, performance, and book arts. His first book, How to Transition on Sixty-Three Cents a Day, is held in over two dozen special collections and museums. He still shoots exclusively with photographic emulsion. His Big Film Series is a collection of nine 35mm hand-processed film portraits that he shot using an early motion picture hand-cranked camera. It was first exhibited as an expanded cinema screening reminiscent of the early days of cinema. He is currently writing and letterpress printing The Migratory Patterns of North American Queers at the Turn of the Century, A contemporary iteration of a family/baby/wedding photo album, Migratory Queers gives readers a non-heteronormative space to place their photos, and interpret their experiences through the lens of migration.
Gabriela Bornstein is a Brazilian born, NY based mixed media artist. Lately she has been focused on figurative painting and observational drawing. Her work has always been about the connectedness between her and the world she is surrounded, but during the pandemic, instead of looking outwards to find this connections, she looked inwards, what lead her to research and develop paintings based on her imaginary ancestry heritage. Gabriela is an emerging artist and her accomplishments include being one of the 20 artists selected to participate in the NYFA Immigrant Mentoring Program. She has exhibited both nationally and internationally, including solo exhibitions and art residencies. She graduated in Communication Arts in 1994 in RJ, Brazil and has been living and working as a graphic designer and artist in NY since 1998.
@Gabriela_gasparini_bornstein
Hsiao-Chu Hsia is a multidisciplinary artist from Taiwan, now based in New York City, focusing on a mix of performance art and installation art. She has a background in clinical psychology and received an MFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art, USA. “Relationship” is the keyword of Hsia’s practice, addressing solidarity yet conflicts between individuals, cultures, generations, humans and environments. Humanitarian crises, environmental degradation, and mental health are what she investigates the most. In 2024, Hsia had her solo exhibition “The Third Party” at Queens College as she received the 2023 Queens Arts Fund from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs. Currently, she is participating in the 2025 residency program on Governors Island with the Taiwanese American Arts Council.
Rose Malenfant (b. 1997, Albany, NY) is a multidisciplinary artist, curator, and educator based in New York. Her practice is grounded in material and relational repair-dismantling rhythms of mass production and consumption, through slow cumulative processes mimicking rituals of the kitchen. She works primarily with textiles and biomaterials creating sculptures using hosiery, fruit, food waste, silverware, bioplastics, wax, gravity and time. Rose has participated in residencies including Textile Arts Center AIR 16 and Beam Center’s Artist in Residence on Governors Island. Her work has been exhibited by galleries throughout New York and abroad including El Barrio Art Space, Atlantic Gallery, and the Factory LIC, with an upcoming solo exhibition at Tempest Gallery ( 2026). Her curatorial work includes exhibitions, Body as a Conduit, Semi Permeable and Propagation: Suspended Roots. She has received awards from The Art Students League of NY and the International Society of Experimental Artists.
Anna Ting Möller lives and works in New York City and Stockholm. Möller has a MFA in Visual Art, with a concentration in installation and expanded practices at Columbia University in the City of New York (2023), and a BFA from Konstfack University, Stockholm (2018).
Justin Sterling (b. 1992 Houston, Texas) - Is a New York City-based visual artist and trumpet player. His primary medium is an archive of reclaimed municipal objects; through recycling and civil disobedience he appropriates the built environment to create an often overlooked world within the urban and domestic. He aims to unravel the way we view authority by revealing various truths about spirituality, protest, urban ecosystems, collective memory, and bad-faith policy, to craft new stories beyond our present moment. Sterlings’ practice meanders through drawing, sculpture, video, installation, and performance.
Acknowledgements
This work is dedicated to the artist's grandmothers.
The artist would like to thank Technical Designer, Courtney Frances Fallon, all performers, STEW participants,
Katya Grokhovsky, the AIOP Team, Christina Freeman, Queens Museum, Mara Catalan, Grace Exhibition Space for their generous use of studio space, photographers Margeaux Walter, Miao Jianxin, Corey Folta, Nooshin Rostami, Jemila MacEwan, Chanel Matsunami Govreau, The Flux Factory Collective, Meghana Karnik, Elina Suoyrjö, Rowena Hurme, The Finnish Cultural Institute, and all others who helped on this project!
To support the artist with a donation please visit:
https://app.thefield.org/profile/Jodie--Lyn-Kee-Chow/631820
IG: lynkeeart
Photo: Margeaux Walter