Allie Wist spent more than a decade as a photo director for food media in New York, most recently at Bon Appétit. As an artist, Wist wanted to portray food in an entirely different way. As a Prairie Ronde artist resident in Vicksburg, she plans to design a sensory installation dinner based on insights (and ingredients) related to some of the paper mill's sustainability-related projects, featuring local, foraged ingredients, edible clay sculptures, and “postindustrial” perfumes.
“It is a style born of a very interdisciplinary background,” Wist says. “It comes frankly form a position of not having an MFA or a background in traditional artmaking. I find that often, even when I did more photography as my practice, I didn’t have a background in studio lighting. I learned it from being on set with photographers when I worked in media and journalism. I realized even then that doing things the improper way or not having all the professional knowledge and training means you ask different questions or set things up differently.”
Using that as her advantage, Wist developed a unique approach to her art. Wist states on her website: “Her artwork encompasses photography, radio broadcasts, artifacts, writing, dinners, and experiential installations that render futuristic speculation accessible through sensory narratives. Wist has recently focused on the role of taste and aesthetics in accessing scales that exceed human subjectivity. She has also studied the role of affect, disgust, and ambiguity in ecological perception and ecological ethics.”
Another aspect of Wist’s art is to alert her viewers and participants to issues of climate change.
“I’ve personally talked to several scientists—everyone from climate modelers to environmental scientists,” Wist says. “One climate modeler said to me, we need something else. The data we produce is real, but it’s not changing anything. People need stories. They need narratives, they need affect and a felt experience. Grief and joy as it relates to the changing ecological situation … I try to create these more affected, sensory or emotional experiences that ask us to sit with the discomfort.”
Allie Wist is the artist resident at Prairie Ronde Artist Residency in Vicksburg from April 20 to May 27. Her work has been shown by Honolulu Biennial, The Wellcome Collection, MIT and the Nobel Prize Museum, and it has been covered by the BBC, NPR and The New York Times.
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