Kitchen Table Talks: Mexico City

Transart Institute and the Food Art Research Network collaborated on an afternoon of conversation exploring food, art, territory and language as part of Transart’s residency in Mexico City. The programme featured presentations on colectivo amasijo’s working methodology, Sofía Olascoaga’s ongoing project La Nutridora: Una cocina para aprender, and a presentation by Beatriz Paz Jiménez and Zoë Heyn-Jones of Dupla Molcajete on their work Entomofagia: Ancestral and Future Foods. The event was introduced by Madeleine Collie, initiator of the Food Art Research Network.

The discussions were followed by a meal prepared by colectivo amasijo, with artists sharing conversations alongside Transart researchers and guests.

colectivo amasijo, created in 2016 in Mexico City, comprises women from different professions and parts of Mexico. The collective rises from the will to care, conserve, and celebrate—creating conditions to actively reflect on the origin and diversity of food actively, de-hierarchizing knowledge and focusing on the “doings” (“haceres”) as a way of learning. The collective listens to the narratives of women close to the land—non-dominant narratives—and cooks collectively to deepen understanding of the interdependence of language, culture, and territory as a network of interrelationships.

Sofia Olascoaga’s focuses on the intersections of art and education through the exploration of encounters, think tanks, and public programs along with artists, theorists, curators, educators, and a wide range of institutional and independent interlocutors. Olascoaga was co-curator of the 32nd Bienal de São Paulo Incerteza Viva; academic curator at MUAC (Museo Universitario de Arte Contemporáneo – UNAM) in Mexico City, 2014; curatorial research fellow at Independent Curators International, 2011; and Helena Rubinstein curatorial fellow at the Whitney Museum of American Art’s Independent Study Program, 2010. She is currently a member of Sistema Nacional de Creadores Artísticos, in Mexico, in Experimental Practices (2019–22), where she is developing the project The Nurturer: Cooking to Learn (La Nutridora: Una cocina para aprender).

Dupla Molcajete is an emergent collaborative practice between researcher-artists and cultural workers Beatriz Paz Jiménez & Zoë Heyn-Jones. Dupla Molcajete works to create spaces for experimentation at the nexus of art, food, and culture from Mesoamerican perspectives, centering on food justice and sustainability. Dupla Molcajete privileges ancestral knowledge and (perma)cultural practices between Mexico and Canada—and across the hemisphere—through cooking, eating, talking, writing, curating, publishing, collaging and making plant-based photochemical images.