✦ Ways of Eating


2022-

ongoing research project

>Ways of Eating is a participatory and performative artistic project in continuous development, initiated in 2022. It focuses on investigating the act of eating as a space for reflection, memory, and transformation, exploring food traditions of the past, present, and future, and the potential of the shared meal as both a ritual and a tool to address issues such as alienation, exploitation, and expropriation.

At the heart of the project is food memory — the sensory recollections of tastes, smells, and gestures that deeply shape our individual and collective identities. Food is one of our most intimate connections to ancestry, land, and culture; it is both a mirror of history and a tool of resistance. By activating this memory, WoE seeks to recover forgotten knowledge, counter cultural erasure, and reclaim food as a space of power, care, and regeneration.

The project also questions how we relate to food and the table — everyday structures that are deeply marked by colonial legacies. Etiquette norms — often perceived as universal or natural — are, in fact, cultural impositions with historical roots in colonization, created to separate, control, and define what is “civilized.” The simple act of arranging bodies and objects around a table carries a long history of normalization and exclusion. To decolonize the table (and at the table) is to imagine new ways of gathering around food, valuing diversity, sharing, and respect for difference.

In this context, the table ceases to be merely a functional object and becomes a symbolic and political territory — a space of encounter and ritual where eating together becomes an act of resistance, listening, and imagination. The shared meal, more than a moment of physical nourishment, is a moment of empathy and connection, where the boundaries between cultures and people begin to blur. Despite the differences in ingredients, rituals, or utensils, the need for communion, belonging, and care is common to all. In a way, the way we eat — how we sit, share, and gather — reflects how we position ourselves in the world.

Through participatory experiences, performative installations, and community meals, WoE creates opportunities for people to reconnect with food, with others, and with themselves, challenging hierarchies, reimagining conviviality, and nurturing new possibilities for community and belonging.
And perhaps, by recognizing that we are not so different from one another after all, we may also begin to rebuild the way we relate to food — and to those who share it with us.