Salad Days #4 Odd Chef’s Jell-O

Within the framework of Salad Days #4–which draws on a Shakespearean reference to evoke youthful days of joy, innocence, and possibility–we invite participating artists to reflect on their memories and personal stories by integrating the culinary as an additional layer of their artistic practices.

With its inherent ambiguity, the culinary is a space where labor, care, and creativity intertwine to shape social bonds and communities, fostering collective growth and sustainability. Referencing Sarah Ahmed’s concept of the ‘dining table’ as a kinship object, this workshop aims to converge diverse perspectives that might ignite new connections and pathways.

Looking back at the past century, gelatin emerged as a quick, versatile tool in the modern kitchen, symbolizing the rise of convenience foods while elevating simple ingredients into creative dishes. Though gelatin-based dishes became staples of social gatherings, they were primarily marketed to housewives as time-saving solutions that also subtly promised to help maintain a slim figure. Beneath jello’s polished image then laid deep-seated gender expectations. In this light, gelatin serves as a historical lens, reflecting societal norms and pressures, particularly those imposed on women.

This gathering invites both exhibited artists and the audience to come together at the dining table. The act of preparing and sharing food unfolds into a collective ritual of artistic expression—where stories, flavors, and ideas simmer and blend. In this setting, the table, traditionally a site of nourishment and communal experience, transforms into a stage for new narratives, encouraging participants to explore and exchange.

Co-produced and curated by
Manon Klein

Participating artists
Marthe Huyse
Sara Boumkwo
& myself

Photography credits go to Johan Poezevara

Salad Days #4

Salad Days refers to the days full of innocence and fun of our youth. It can also refer to the peak of one's ability. The term comes from Shakespeare's play Antony and Cleopatra, first act, scene 5, where Cleopatra says: ‘My salad days, When I was green in judgment, cold in blood, To say as I said then!’

Design Museum Ghent once again presents graduation projects by students from KASK & Conservatory and LUCA School of Arts Ghent. In DING Vitrine, you will discover a magically strange mix of a falling astronaut, a queer kinship cooking video, an emotional AI analysis of objects, a braided kanekalon curtain, a leporello with (un)fallen women, pixelated memories of Afghan refugees, a steel lamp inspired by Venetian sandwiches and an organically changing felt carpet.

Participating artists
Sam Evers
Marthe Huyse
Louise Versele
Sara Boumkwo
Fatemeh Khezri
Hazel Ver Moesen
Stefanie Salzmann
& myself

Photography credits go to Anthony De Meyere

Home is Where the Heart is (a collective recipe)

An object slowly floating lands in the palm of my hands, merging with the how that has been given to me in a continuous cycle of valuable exchange. As we cook, we remember the kinship we form through thinking together, otherwise – constructing a world in which communities are not seen as labels. Let this polyphony of scents invite you to experience the imaginative possibilities of a simple exchange of recipes.

‘Home is Where the Heart’ is has connected 10 individuals into a collective being which attended the first gathering of my ongoing project ‘The Kinship Cookbook’, called Home Sweet Home. Through reading and writing together, following a performance from one of the participants, creating an ephemeral in-situ installation with personal offerings and a collective dinner, we set off to rethink the domestic as a transformative space of diverse values. Through these collective moments, the participants wrote recipes which later on I activate through performance, sculptural interventions and installation – accentuating the necessity of embracing our queer kinships and exploring diverse embodiments of human and non-human nature.

Ingredients by
Lorenço
Kyra Nijskens
Abel Hartooni
Sjoerd Beijers
Beljita Gurung
Lizzy Jongedijk
Martyna Pekala
Seppe-Hazel Laeremans
Jessica Marlieke van Egmond

Costume
Aidan Abnet

Animation
Sjoerd Beijers

Camera & Edit
Isaac Ponseele
Benjamin Ponseele

Music
Benjamin Schoones

Typography
Seppe-Hazel Laeremans

The Kinship Cookbook (ongoing)

What if we could use language in a way that would escape the predicament of being a functional instrument? What if our stories could invite the lichen, butterflies, bacteria, and fungi to teach us how to grief, love and grow? How does our forming of kin influence our collective responsibility?

‘The Kinship Cookbook’ is a proposition to gather, speculate, and share knowledge around the forming of inclusive infrastructures using recipes as a methodology. The process of assembly, based on gatherings revolving around different topics is essential in the collective manifest which the cookbook accumulates through time. Set to challenge traditional societal norms, it provides an alternative rooted in world building and speculation, and ultimately builds a new ground for collective reflection.  

Using the emergent kinships as a prototype for the visualisation of the content of the recipes, the installation invites the audience to enter a possible world in which care and kindness is embedded in the formulation of these elements, and therefore forms a living, growing work.

The project has been realized with the help of
Lorenço
Aidan Abnet
Kyra Nijskens
Abel Hartooni
Sjoerd Beijers
Beljita Gurung
Isaac Ponseele
Lizzy Jongedijk
Martyna Pekala
Benjamin Ponseele
Benjamin Schoones
Seppe-Hazel Laeremans
Jessica Marlieke van Egmond

Master project at KASK & Conservatorium, Ghent

Photography credits go to Johan Poezevara

Gathering #2: To Weave a Story

What stories have shaped our world since childhood? Fair maidens, jesters and knights aim to portray the plentiful landscape through which the male Hero conquers his quest. Conventional stories revolve around this male protagonist, causing other characters, non-human life and the environment to only enter the story by proving their usefulness to him. The real world mirrors these conventions, excluding diverse stories, the marginalized and the unproductive from being heard.

In light of fostering different perspectives, ‘To Weave a Story’ sets out to dismantle the standard form of storytelling by including the environment and its margins. A selection of artworks forms the basis from which we imagine props, fictional characters, natural environments and backdrops. These deconstructed elements of the story become building blocks for a small workshop on storytelling. By weaving together these elements in various ways, diverse stories will emerge, through which other forms of life, and other ways of living may take the spotlight.

On the 30th of March, the exhibition will open to the public. The displayed works invite the viewers to form personal interpretations and narratives. The stories resulting from the workshop become the foundation for hourly, oral storytelling sessions. Throughout this gathering, we hope to not only diversify that which is represented but also seek diversification in how stories are told. This is an effort to find ways of storytelling that don’t comply with the conventional negation of unseen and nonsensical truths. Instead, the program aims to speculatively fabulate on the role of storytelling as a ritual, in which non-anthropocentric, queer and anti-productionist stories may unfold.

Co-produced and curated by
Sjoerd Beijers & myself

Artists
Aidan Abnet
Justine Grillet
Guillaume Jannes
Jochem Mestriner
Samuel White Evans
& myself

Writers
Isa Vink
Jule Köepke
Jesse Kempkes
Babette Lagrange

Photography credits go to Johan Poezevara