10. Table Manners in Times Square

November Times Square Midnight MomentMegan Stahl for Times Square Arts

November’s Midnight Moment series from Time Square Arts features Table Manners by artist Zina Saro-Wiwa. Visible on Time Square every night from 11:57 pm to midnight, the newest art exhibition centers around people in the Niger Delta Region and their eating rituals. In the videos, all the individuals are filmed while eating their meals with their hands, but instead of looking elsewhere, they stare straight into the camera. The format allows the artist to convey “a celebration of community, tradition, and a collective act of memory.” Saro-Wiwa’s work, according to Time Square Arts website, is “candid and vulnerable yet undeniably confrontational,” raising “consciousness around the socioeconomic and political troubles the oil-producing Nigerian region faces.”

“Table Manners appearing as the Midnight Moment is a special curatorial opportunity. It suggests the magic of the Midnight Feast which is the inspiration for my opening night performance,” Saro-Wiwa said in a press statement. “My hope is that people can come together — socially distanced of course — and commune with not only the people of Ogoniland and Port Harcourt in Nigeria who I have filmed, but also with each other. To look each other in the eye and just be.”