Aquí y allá: juntos a la mesa
Created for the ICA Watershed, East Boston, 2019
Aquí y Allá: Juntos A La Mesa highlights the important role the common table can serve as a site for gathering and for nourishment. Since 2016, hundreds of women have partaken in communal meals made of diverse stories through the ongoing multigenerational community project, Comida Casera - Spanish for homemade food or food from home. Participants in Comida Casera events share stories and a dish inspired by a person who has had a meaningful impact on their connection to home. Through these simple gestures of hospitality and welcoming, notions of home and community expand through food and storytelling.
At the ICA Watershed, visitors were invited to sit at the living table, hear recorded stories collected at past Comida Casera events, and share their own stories on cards provided for others to read and reflect on. At the table, visitors surrounded themselves with a collection of plants comprising a range of local edible species grown with Eastie Farm to reflect on our past, present, and future relationship with food sources. Throughout the summer, a series of programs and activities on cultivating food, home, and community were co-hosted by artist Evelyn Rydz and Kannan Thiruvengadam of Eastie Farm.
Table activations included programs such as Transplant Tales, Solstice Stories, Recetas de Casa, Green Walks, Garden Tastings with Local Chefs Ellie Tiglao, chef and co-owner of Filipino-American restaurant Tanam and Monica Leitner-Laserna, chef and owner of La Sanghita Café and co-founder of Eastie Farms.
Learn more about this participatory project at ICA Watershed. Read more about the project in Edible Boston.
Aqui y Alla: Juntos a La Mesa
A project by Evelyn Rydz in collaboration with Kannan Thiruvengadam of Eastie Farms
Table by Evelyn Rydz
I.D. & Fabrication by Matthew Neidhardt
A LA MESA
Created for the MIT List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge, 2019
For this year’s Student Lending Art Program exhibition the List Center invited artist Evelyn Rydz to create a participatory installation and site of social engagement for MIT students and the MIT arts community. Rydz creates an intimate table setting to gather, listen, share and create. A La Mesa calls participants to the table to partake in a shared communal meal made up of diverse stories. It is a call to welcome strangers through acts of hospitality, trust and generosity.
This participatory installation is inspired by Rydz’s ongoing mutligenerational project Comida Casera which uses food and storytelling to connect women and create community. The aim of the project is to bring together a diverse group of women from different fields, neighborhoods, generations, and backgrounds to map ideas of home through food and the women who share their stories. The Comida Casera project seeks to cultivate community and build lasting connections that exist well beyond each event.
For A La Mesa, participants are invited to sit at the table and listen to stories culled from previous Comida Casera community events. Through a series of drop-in projects and scheduled workshops, participants will use layers of colorful shapes to create step-by-step recipe instruction booklets inspired by the people and food that form a sense of home. Participants will be invited to share their diagrammed recipe stories and contribute their booklets to a shared library exploring the places, people and shared dishes that shape their connections to home.
RECETAS DE CASA
Created for ICA Watershed, East Boston, 2019 / Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 2020 / Urbano Project, 2020
Online Program, from and about home: Recetas de Casa, is now an online exchange of recipes and stories that form our connections to home and healing. Participants gather to share what is bringing comfort, healing, nourishment and the sense of home during these challenging and uncertain times. Participants receive a digital cookbook including all shared recipes.
Read more about the project in The Boston Globe and The Scope.
In-Person Program: The intimate gatherings create open exchange around the table for sharing recipes and stories from home. Participants use blank recipe cards and drawing materials provided on the table to record memories, drawings, and recipes inspired by a person and shared dish that have had a meaningful impact on their connection to home. Participants are invited to exchange their recipe cards with another guest sitting at the table.
Images above are from Recetas de Casa on the occasion of International Women’s Day at the MFA, Boston and from Recetas de Casa at the ICA Watershed, East Boston as part of table activations for A La Mesa.
A LA MESA / TO THE TABLE
Created for the exhibition Nine Moments for Now at the Cooper Gallery of African and African American Art,
Hutchins Center, Harvard University, Curated by Dell M. Hamilton, 2018 - 2019
A La Mesa / To the Table calls us to the table to partake in a shared communal meal made up of diverse stories. It is a call to welcome strangers through acts of hospitality, trust and generosity.
Participants are invited to sit at the table and listen to women’s stories from previous Comida Casera events using food and storytelling to create a shared space of exchange, celebrate differences, map experiences of home, and cultivate community.
On this table, blank recipe cards and pencils are provided for participants to record and archive their memories, drawings and recipes inspired by a person and shared dish who have had a meaningful impact on their connection to home. View the Nine Moments for Now exhibition program here.
