Gestures and Objects, design and rituality

Temporary Exhibition
Zapopan Museum of Art
Zapopan, Jalisco, 2024

From manners to table forms

This curatorial exercise reflects on the connection between table manners and the form of cutlery. As the result of research into cutlery and table codes, a selection of pieces and objects was assembled to illustrate the evolution of the knife, spoon, and fork in the modern era, and their relationship to the table, diners, and civilizing processes.

Systemic map of cooking recipes

By applying systems thinking theories to the cooking recipe, various analyses were conducted to understand the links between processes, ingredients, instructions, context, and their implications within food system chains.

The Codes of Recipes

Cooking recipes are key representations of gastronomic culture, as they contain the information necessary to carry out actions that result in the preparation of a dish or culinary product.
A cooking recipe, like a musical score, contains a series of records and notations that must be interpreted and performed.

Codex of Local Ingredients

The Codex of Local Ingredients for Sustainable Recipes is an initiative that, through research protocols, analyzes local products, their ingredients, and the different actors involved in production processes, with the aim of generating outreach materials to promote responsible local consumption and to create a general catalog of local products, ingredients, and positive practices.

Cooking recipes as design artifacts

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The research approaches the cooking recipe from a design perspective. 

It is explained as a design artifact, and a model is proposed to identify and facilitate design and redesign processes based on its relationship with the user, objects, context, and its usefulness as a tool for culinary design and development.

The cooking recipe hacker's toolkit

This toolkit is a design system that explains the cooking recipe as a design artifact and provides the user, or “hacker,” with theoretical tools to redesign and adapt cooking recipes in order to promote positive changes in our food preparation practices and consumption habits.

The taste of  future Europe

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The province of Gelderland hosted the 50th Annual Meeting of the Association of European Border Regions. Katja Gruijters was invited to design a gastronomic experience based on the ingredients, rituals, and traditions of seven European border regions.

Espumas de cacao

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Espumas de cacao is a gastronomic experience that, in the form of a temporary bar, revives the cultural, organoleptic, and chemical properties of cacao foams used as toppings in beverages of pre-Hispanic origin. These drinks are made with cacao, grains, seeds, flowers, and herbs and remain traditional in several communities in Oaxaca, in southern Mexico.

Eat with them

A tasting dinner in which moles, sweets, flowers, copals, spirits, fruits, vegetables, chocolates, and seeds are fundamental to an experience that references pre-Hispanic thought—one that connects the intangible and the supernatural, and was associated with volatility and the refinement of aromas, as these elements were considered a link to the gods and ancestors.

The first edition of Tectonics of Eating

Assemblages of fictions 

It revisits the construction of fictional narratives around objects and artifacts in order to create metafictions about ingredients, recipes, and their preparations, as well as the assemblage of living materials that breathe, contract, possess smells and textures, and also age and degrade—as in the case of wood and food—thus promoting the creation of edible objects through assemblages of fictions.

Rain tables

Rain Tables encourage reflection on the connection between ingredients, cuisine, and landscape during the rainy season in Oaxaca through sensory installations and a tasting menu, designed based on recipes and consumption habits characteristic of these months of abundance.

Archetypal Speakeasy

A walking dinner that, through four future scenarios of Oaxacan cuisine—developed from the recognition and analysis of patterns and signals of change derived from the findings of the last three years of research within the Mesatemporal project—explores the different possibilities of cultural practices surrounding food.

Samaritana tables

Every fifth Friday of Lent, in Oaxaca flavored waters are given away in homes, businesses, and under porticos. This colonial-era tradition blends elements of Catholic faith with local culture. Historically, these “refreshments” represented moments of pause and socialization, and Oaxaca’s aguas frescas reflect the region’s fruit diversity and seasonality. Traditional recipes include rice horchata, tamarind, and hibiscus, which can be enriched with chopped fruit and spices.

The life of seeds

A dinner in which, over seven courses, the cycle of seeds is narrated from pollination to their transformation through natural or artificial means.

In this tasting, each dish alludes to one of the stages in the life of seeds through recipes typical of the dry season, in which seeds are the predominant ingredient, aiming to recover the bond with our food and its origins through ingredients, gestures, and utensils.

Smell, eat and drink 

It is a sensory and educational experience designed to promote conscious and reflective consumption through the interaction between smell and taste. Using a series of utensils created for this purpose, participants exercise their olfactory abilities and enrich their personal library of scents and correlations, with special attention to retronasal olfaction and its impact on flavor perception, using a selection of harmonies, endemic Mexican ingredients, and local beverages.