The Pink Supper

The Pink Supper by Nando Messias takes the form of a performance on Thursday 7 November, followed by an installation and long table event on Friday 8 November. The Pink Supper is the Library of Performing Rights Commission 2019. Nando seeks participants to take a seat at his table during the performance.

Performance: Thursday 7 November

7.30pm, £10

Book here

How can artists react ethically to social injustice? Commissioned by The Library of Performing Rights and LADA, The Pink Supper is Nando Messias’ latest artistic response to this ever more pressing question.

“I’m just back from a trip to my native Brazil,” he says, “where I re-experienced the fear that comes from being in a place where violence and oppression are just parts of daily life.” Despite its warm, fun-loving, easy-going international image, Brazil remains the number one country in the world for trans murders—a shocking disgrace.

Originally Nando envisaged inviting12 ambassadors from countries where homosexuality is illegal to sit around the table with him for a meal. That turned out to be a logistical nightmare but also led to more questions for him: “Would I have been giving oppression a platform? Would my audience share my wish for dialogue rather than confrontation? Did I secretly hope the ambassadors would decline to attend?

The Pink Supper has developed into an exploration of ethics in performance, an urgent artistic quest for red-hot honesty. As the world’s politics turn to reactionary populism, Nando turns to shocking pink. Join him in his world of lavish symbolism, profound spectacle, adoring icons who let you down, insistent sincerity and his unique elegant rage.

Ambassadors may now not be coming but your presence is very much required. Dress code: angry pink …but only if that feels really you.

Commissioned for The Library of Performing Rights and supported by the Live Art Development Agency (LADA) with additional support from South Bank University, and the Study Room in Exile.

Installation and Long Table: Friday 8 November

3-4pm, free

Book here.

Long table discussion on being in exile, leaving home, LGBTQI+ human rights and social justice

Created by artist Lois Weaver, “The Long Table is a dinner party structured by etiquette, where conversation is the only course. The project ingeniously combines theatricality and models for public engagement. It is at once a stylised appropriation and an open-ended, non-hierarchical format for participation. Both of these elements – theatrical craft and political commitment – are mutually supporting in this widely and internationally toured work. The (often-feminised) domestic realm here becomes a stage for public thought.”

4-5pm, free, with Long Table ticket

Installation of performance traces from the previous evening.

We invite you to an installation where you will have a chance to see in closer detail the commissioned ceramic plates created by Nando Messias and Aga Robak. Each plate is decorated with an image of one of Nando’s personal queer heroes.