Kitchen Talks: the food and culture of Timor-Leste

BACKGROUND Melbourne is not simply the city for Foodies, but has also become a site of everyday art intervention exploring changing food culture in the contexts of climate change and mass migration. Within this burgeoning field, social practice artists are using a range of political, artistic and discursive strategies to engage the public, industry and consumers in important conversations about what and how we eat. What are the art histories informing this preoccupation of artists with food production, consumption and sharing? This lineage includes Beuys' social sculpture, Chicago, Orta and Lacy's feminist contributions, Bourriaud's relational aesthetics, and the new social economies of social practice that connect us to the everyday. CONTRIBUTION A collaboration between myself as artist-curator, photographer Jorge de Araujo, J., and activist Carmelita Gomes, 'Kitchen Talks: the food and culture of Timor-Leste' was a social arts project that involved oral history and memories of first generation Timorese immigrants in representing their culture through images, recipes and stories collected in the kitchen over nine months. Asked 'what recipe reminds you of your mother?' the project uncovered stories of migration, refuge and trauma together with the evolution of transnational food cultures. The project was as much about visiting these kitchens to cook together as it was the final exhibition. The project was developed with the artists and the East Timorese Community in partnership with the Friends of Suai/ Covalima. SIGNIFICANCE The exhibition was selected by the Arts Jury at the City of Port Phillip and funded in part by CoPP Cultural Development Grants and Multicultural Arts Victoria. More than 300 guest attended the dinner party on opening night and the project has developed into phase two Kitchen Talks 2.0 where the artists will develop a similar project in Timor. Elements of the exhibition have been published Recipes and Refuge published by Rag and Bone Press.