The Dinner Party consists of a large, triangular table with 39 seats, each representing a woman from history or mythology. The names of 999 women are inscribed on ceramic plates, which are arranged on the table or on the floor. The installation is meant to evoke a sense of a dinner party, but with a twist: all the guests are women.
While the film relies on some tropes of the genre (gambling, deli meat, mob connections), it avoids the glorified violence of Goodfellas (released three years prior). Instead, it focuses on the mundane realities of the lifestyle—the scramble for rent money, the obligation to neighbors, and the food culture that binds the community together. The Dinner Party -1994-