Both cooking and poetry stand for aspects of our daily lives we cannot do without. One accounts for the nourishment and maintenance of the body, and the other represents the communication of abstractions, thoughts and ideas. This project is an ongoing journey where the two worlds are to interact, interpret and transform one another.

Leaning on the conception that God brought the universe into being by speaking it –  i.e. with the use of words – we chose to begin with a poetic/lyrical article which will inspire a culinary dish, and the latter will then inspire a new poem, and so on and so forth.

Since both of us are coming from very different cultural backgrounds, with different languages as our native tongues, it was decided to use English for this project, a language which serves as the foundation for our day-to-day communication. As the work progresses, cooking also becomes a language spoken between us, by means of trying to foresee the likings of each of us and tailoring the dish accordingly, using both the differences and commonalities in our tastes. The list of ingredients grows to become a culinary vocabulary, a language that caters to the body and soothes the soul.

* This project was part of the “Cookbook of the Pandemic Year“, a parallel program to the event organized as part of  “Drifting Realities: The Archipelago of Food Discourses”, organized by UCCA and curated by Fang Yan.