Curation as Communion: Inside The Summer Artist’s Table Powered by WOAH and Audi – Essence

Rewriting the Script of Access and Authorship

Artist’s Table is WOAH’s (Work of Art Holdings) answer to the rigid hierarchies of the art world. Michi Jigarjian, CEO and founder, and Isolde Brielmaier, Chief Strategy Officer, wield nearly four decades of combined experience, navigating the inner workings of the art industry with the rare ability to reimagine it—disassembling systems and reconstructing them for new voices and audiences.

“For me,” Brielmaier shares, “my background is varied—it’s academia, it’s curating. I’ve worked in the public and private sectors, and I’m really trying to bring all of those experiences and relationships, those learnings, to the table.”

Together with Jigarjian, they’ve stepped out of the white cube and onto the veranda. They’re curating experiences in order to reshape cultural literacy. Jigarjian, herself a collector and hotelier, brings a parallel force: community building, curatorial precision, and a commitment to never reduce artists into marketable brands.

“WOAH’s curated dinner series is about more than just gathering,” Jigarjian explains. “It’s about creating space for intentional exchange among visionary leaders who shape culture through creativity, inclusivity, and purpose.”

A Collaboration That Collapses Boundaries

At the core of the Aspen event was an ethos of boundary-blurring across disciplines, backgrounds, and senses. “The idea is to bring together visual artists and culinary artists to co-create an experience that highlights a broad range of cultures,” says Brielmaier, WOAH’s Chief Strategy Officer.

This principle was deeply resonant in the collaboration with Audi. “With WOAH,” says Whaewon Choi, Audi’s Sr. Director of Brand Strategy, Communications & Experiences, “we share a commitment to advancing design, culture, and innovation. Their ability to create meaningful experiences that celebrate the arts complements our focus on progress through design.”

Aspen is a unique but fitting backdrop to the ethos at operation with the Artist’s Table. With its breathtaking views and uncompromising natural beauty, Aspen’s particular cultural phenomenon is its understanding that aesthetics are not ornamental but essential. In this town, design is elemental. Audi’s long-standing partnership with the region’s cultural and hospitality institutions, such as The Little Nell, speaks to a mutual appreciation of beauty as necessity.

“Aspen is more than meets the eye,” Choi adds. “With nature, arts, culinary, sports, and more, Audi has expanded our partnership with Aspen One since 2010 to help people discover unexpected experiences and adventures in our vehicles.”

One manifestation of this collaboration is through Audi’s August opportunity to experience Colorado’s most iconic natural landmark—the Maroon Bells. Through the lens of Audi’s automotive precision and luxury hospitality, this exclusive excursion offered through The Little Nell represents the perfect marriage of masterful engineering and Rocky Mountain grandeur, offering guests an unparalleled way to access one of the most photographed peaks in North America.

The excursion to Maroon Bells takes guests along the historic Maroon Creek Road, a route that requires reservations to access the Maroon Bells Scenic Area. This carefully regulated access ensures the preservation of this fragile alpine ecosystem while maintaining an exclusive experience for visitors. To stand at the lip of Maroon Lake is to be subsumed by a silence that doesn’t ask for reverence, but assumes it. The peaks—Maroon and North Maroon—vault upward like memory made geological, their bruised-rose striations a fluke of time and pressure, not beauty’s intent but its consequence. Similar excursions are offered seasonally outside and around Aspen Mountain.

An Immersive Evening of Art, Memory, and Meaning

The summer edition of Artist’s Table featured the multivalent artist and YoungArts board member Derrick Adams, alongside the celebrated Chef Mawa McQueen. Their collaborative dinner unfolded like a conceptual installation—each course framed as an “episode,” a nod to Adams’ visual language and ongoing exploration of television and mass media as communal spaces.

“With Derrick Adams and Mawa McQueen as our hosts,” says Jigarjian, “the evening was a powerful fusion of art, food, and dialogue and a true reflection of the transformative spirit that defines this pivotal week in the cultural calendar.”

Every element was intentional. A live performance by trumpeter Dave Guy and YoungArts alumna Grace Weber imbued the night with improvisational intimacy. The tablescape—bright with placemats and menus inspired by vintage TV color bars—paid homage to the aesthetics of broadcast history, highlighting themes around Black life, consumerism, and media representation, all central to Adams’ practice.

A Culinary Narrative of Culture and Comfort

Framed by the concept of the “TV dinner” as both domestic ritual and cultural commentary, each course was a sensory meditation. Afro-French influences shaped a menu rooted in nostalgia and reimagined comfort. “No snow, all soul,” said McQueen as she introduced the oxtail à la bourguignonne, a dish that anchored the evening’s heartier arc.

The menu was as much about gathering as it was about flavor, echoing living rooms where laughter, memory, and televised dreams commingled in equal measure.

“Working with Derrick was one of the most seamless creative partnerships I’ve had,” McQueen shared. “There was this natural rhythm between us, and we both understand storytelling.” Whether on a canvas or a plate, the duo was committed to building something meant to last, meant to say something.

For Adams, this was a homecoming of sorts. As a board member of YoungArts and a committed mentor, he brings an ethos of artistic stewardship to everything he does. His collaboration with McQueen was practice, pedagogy, performance.

“I created the visual experience, and she followed suit by naming the meal courses after television episodes,” he explains. “As we developed the concept, we both reflected on our personal exposure to media—myself as a Black American, and Mawa as a French/African/American entertained by American TV.”

He describes the collaboration as “enjoyable in every way imaginable,” saying they “jumped in with both feet” to fully embody the idea of the American TV dinner as a cultural canvas.

At the heart of Artist’s Table is a quiet but profound defiance: center the artist, and let everything orbit them. In Audi, WOAH has found a partner willing to follow that vision. Because this initiative isn’t about chasing collectors or catering to market trends, it’s about redefining power. It’s about the artist as host, as architect of experience, as agent of change.

No one rushed. Conversation lingered. The space had been carved out deliberately where Black joy, creative experimentation, and culinary storytelling could thrive in full bloom.

This is WOAH’s broader mission: transforming an industry that too often treats artists as content providers into one where they are cultural leaders. Jigarjian and Brielmaier are convening scenes and redistributing authority, ensuring that artists eat first, speak first, and set the terms.

As Adams puts it: “There’s a feeling of being inspired by others through facilitating experiences that lift up those around you—that’s never transactional. Sometimes those experiences can make your art and your life more meaningful. It’s also, for some, a way to get out of your own head—which most creatives are prone to when they rely solely on their own thoughts as the dominant voice, without considering the meaningful voices all around them.”