Edible landscapes: Food as an artistic medium

Abstract

Food is a profoundly sensorial experience, as it nourishes us, it also gives us meaning and makes us what we are. Memories from home abound every time we distinguish the scent of our favorite foods or when we attempt to recreate cherished recipes from home that only our mother knows how to make. Food carries personal stories that can be experienced through the embodied act of cooking and through sharing food with others. Food can also be art, because it needs to be appreciated and digested, not only through the sense of taste.

This master’s thesis investigates food as an artistic medium, materializing memories and my personal identity into edible art in the context of leaving my home country of Mexico to establish in Finland. This research is driven by a contemporary emerging and exciting cross-disciplinary sphere between food, art, and design, and proposes a whole artistic practice out of this ephemeral and multidisciplinary medium.

The first part of the thesis provides a theoretical framework that builds a comprehensive backdrop around my food culture, personal identity, the realm of the senses, and the intersection between food and art. food. By delving into the personal, cultural, sensorial, and emotional dimensions of food, this research reveals how it can be used to evoke memories and emotions, and communicate personal narratives. Furthermore, the second part corresponds to the artistic and practical research, which is divided into individual ingredients with cultural, historical, and personal meanings to me. Each ingredient starts from my personal stories, grows into edible experiments to then unravel into an edible landscape. In the artistic research, an experimental exploration of flavors, shapes, and colors is performed through the embodied act of cooking, as well as through the sensuous act of eating.