A PROJECT BY AIDA EL-OWEIDY

Can the production of food knowledge act not only as a method to preserve traditional foodways in displaced communities (in the Netherlands) but also as a space for resistance? A space to express feelings about displacement, identity, movement, & politics?

What stories can we extract from the recipes of our past and what recipes can we write for our future? Can the recipe format be used as a manifesto or a map? What else do we talk about when we talk about food? Can we use it to explore our relationship to our communities, our realities, and our identity? Is it possible to bring tangible change to society through the production of food knowledge?

Aida Hamed El-Oweidy reaches out to people with experiences of displacement to engage with their expertise of creating meaning between places of the past and present in order to create recipes for the future. This proposes that the format of a recipe offers a blank space to be used to create dialogue and share personal narratives using food as the medium. 

This research project culminates with a workshop to gather ingredients, recipes, memories, and stories from the public. This uses writing, drawing, audio recording, and video to create an archive of food knowledge that reflects community dynamics, desires, and a collective approach to sharing knowledge. She hopes to develop this workshop series in a multitude of spaces and landscapes to reflect and reveal the underlying power structures and dynamics at play and hopes for this to be an ongoing process of sharing. 

Aida Hamed El-Oweidy has been developing her project with the generous support of anthropologist Noha Fikry who teaches at the American University in Cairo, Salwa foundation in Amsterdam, and all the participants in the Play with Your Food workshop.