The chef and the Cleaning Maid
I SAY CRUNCHY GRANOLA
Border Food
About
Cooking A Portrait is a way to look at identity and relationship by cooking a meal with someone who knows you well.
The only prompt is that the participants choose a meal that represents them. They can interpret that in anyway they want. It can be literally the food they ate growing up, an abstracted depiction of their personality or anything in between.
I chose to do this project because my relationship with food and cooking has always been a passionate, volatile, and vulnerable part of my life. My history, upbringing, and the way I feel about myself is directly reflected in my cooking and how I consume food.
I have been taught to show love to myself and others through cooking and food. However, my family lineage is rich with disordered eaters and over-givers, and I am no exception.
I was influenced by Amir Nizar Zuabi’s sight-specific, one-woman play “Oh My Sweet Land.” Which viscerally highlighted the role cooking can play in storytelling by performing the story of a Syrian-American woman returning to her country in the midst of war, all while the performer is cooking a real meal in a real kitchen.
I wanted an opportunity to use a cultural-probe framework to talk about identity, history, and family dynamics in a less structured more right-brained way. So I decided to ask people to paint a self-portrait through a meal.
I believe all of us have a fraught dynamic with food, hunger and fullness, cooking and consuming. It’s tied up in how we have been raised and our ethnic, cultural, and societal influences. It also plays on our relationship to our families, to comfort, to what we think we deserve, and to how we approach love.