exhibitions
Waffle House Vistas August 24, 2024 – May 25, 2025
“Waffle House does not care how much you are worth, what you look like, where you are from, what your political beliefs are or where you’ve been so long as you respect the unwritten rules of Waffle House: Be kind, be respectful and don’t overstay when others are waiting for a table.”
— Micah Cash
Micah Cash, “Store #1912: Mobile, Alabama.” Image provided by artist.
Micah Cash, “Store #1449: Calvert City, Kentucky.” Image provided by artist.
Emerging from Micah Cash’s photography series and photo book of the same name, this exhibition fo- cuses on the built and natural environments as seen through the windows of Waffle House restaurants. Captured from locations across the southeastern United States, these images contemplate the phys- ical and social environments and commerce that surround each location of the southern cultural icon. The natural landscapes beyond the windowpanes are as diverse as the perspectives and stories of each guest at the tables. Yet the similarities of the restaurants’ interiors echo across states and time zones. The images look out from the restaurant’s iconic booths, past the signature midcentury pen- dant lamps, and make viewers newly conscious of buildings so commonplace they often go unseen.
Each guest, waiting for their hashbrowns, becomes witness to the intertwined narratives of economic stability, transience and politics. The familiar, well- worn interiors make us think about what we have in common. Yet the differ - ences in environment call to mind the different ways we experience structures built and felt. This exhibition will premiere a newly commissioned time-based media com- ponent of the series. This video realizes Cash’s directive to “look up” through prolonged footage of views and sounds from three Waffle Houses. The video and its soundscape disrupt the nostalgia of the still photographs, which the audience animates with actual or imagined memories of a Waffle House meal. Instead, they emphasize a long, time-based vision of the surrounding landscape and architecture.
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