[The event is fully booked]

Gathering around potatoes, cassava, and herbs

Papas-Potatoes, Camotes-Sweet potatoes, and Yucas-Cassava originate from South America, specifically from the Andes and the Amazon. Their journey around the world through colonialism has left numerous stories of forgetfulness and denial regarding their origins and significance in the indigenous cultures of Abya Yala. Some of these stories highlight practical solutions in times of crisis, survival, and the pursuit of sovereignty, particularly in regions of the global South. Herbs, found across the globe, also possess healing properties that support humans and other living beings in finding harmony and recovery.

In this workshop, with members of Women in Exile, artists Gatari Surya Kusuma, Daniela Zambrano Almidón, and Åsa Sonjasdotter, will reflect on themes of colonialism, migration, resistance and food through the lens of root crops such as potatoes, sweet potatoes, and cassava, as well as healing herbs.

This cooking session and extended dinner aims to re-learn practices that recognize Mother Earth as a grounding foundation. Participants will explore different contexts brought by Zambrano Almidón, Surya Kusuma and Sonjasdotter, using herbs from Flamingo collective’s Hevrîn Xelef garden and engaging in dialogue with members of Women in Exile.

Throughout the dinner, a series of interconnected stories will be shared through recipes. Recipes are not merely instructions for making a dish but also invitations to explore various social and earthbound relationships. This gathering will illustrate how food, plants, knowledge, and culture are deeply rooted in womxn and the land.

By participating in this cooking session and dinner, attendees will engage in processes of decolonization and healing. The exploration of the migratory journeys of potatoes, sweet potatoes, cassava and herbs will reveal ways to live in harmony with ecosystems and strengthen communities through food sovereignty and natural healing.

We invite you to participate thoughtfully in these events which center an intersectionally feminist and anti racist focus.

Potatoes and their kin root fruits are elements of maternal shelter, vessels of migratory stories and global movement. The action of Papitas Tarpuy-cha – Earthing potatoes and Healing with Herbs is initiated by Daniela Zambrano Almidón, Gatari Surya Kusuma, and Åsa Sonjasdotter, for the re-learning and recognition of practices based in the grounding presence of Mother Earth.

Papitas Tarpuy-cha connects with the Flamingo collective who support refugee women* and children, growing healing herbs in their garden in memory of Hevrîn Xelef in Neukölln, as well as with the initiative Women in Exile founded in Brandenburg by refugee women fighting for their rights. This series of workshops bring voices together against abuse of, with, and by Mother Earth, to generate healing relations and transformations.

Gatari Surya Kusuma. called Gatari, is a researcher and curator based in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. After graduating from the Department of Photography at the Indonesian Institute of Art in 2016 (BA), she is developing and sharpening her collectivity practices with her two collectives. She is doing action research and deepened critical pedagogy with her group KUNCI Study Forum & Collective and School of Improper Education. With Bakudapan Food Study Group, she does artistic production and ethnographic research related to food. She is part of two other platforms focusing on socio-ecological such as Struggles for Sovereignty, a collective platform that focuses on the intersections of social and ecological justice, and Participatory Urban Food System, a peer research group about urban, food, and agrarian studies in Southeast Asia.

Daniela Zambrano Almidón is a Quechua researcher and interdisciplinary artist from Collique, Lima. Her work focuses on Andean cultures, decolonisation processes, postcolonial memory, and cultural heritage, utilising diverse formats such as agricultural art, performance, textiles, video, installation, and social sculpture. She holds a Master’s degree in Art in Context from the Berlin University of the Arts (UDK) and a Bachelor’s degree in Fine Arts with an emphasis on Sculpture and Interdisciplinary Art from the National School of Fine Arts in Peru. As the founder and director of the decentralised intercultural art project Tejiendo Caminos, Daniela collaborates with indigenous community leaders, environmental activists, and traditional artists. Currently, she organises cultural events through the intercultural centre „Todas las Sangres“ in Berlin. Her work has been showcased internationally, including the Singapore Biennale 2022-23, a residency at Villa Romana in Florence (2023), the VIII International Seminar on Public Art in Latin America in Havana, and currently at the Indigenous Film Festival by the Chilean Museum of Pre-Columbian Art.

Åsa Sonjasdotter’s artistic work is driven by an urge to engage in material-narrative and social processes for the unmaking of violent relations through food and land. Having grown up between monoculture farm fields in the highly industrialised farm region of South Scandinavia, she has an embodied experience of what such relations do to the habitats. Further, it was in this region that a ‘universally applicable’ technique for monoculture plant breeding was invented. This technique provides the base for legislations imposed by globally operating seed corporations aiming at criminalising the use of peasants’ seeds. The topic is elaborated in the 2022 film Cultivating Abundance made in dialogue with the seed association Allkorn (Common Grains) and plant breeder Hans Larsson. For about two decades, Sonjasdotter has worked on the restoration of peasant knowledges and food relations following the migratory trajectories of staples such as potatoes, grain, and cabbages.

Women in Exile is an initiative of refugee women founded in Brandenburg in 2002 to fight for their rights. Women in Exile has made the experience that refugee women are doubly discriminated against, not only by racist laws in general but also as women. The organisation is a platform for refugee women. The organisation brings the inhumane living conditions of refugee women to the public and develop strategies for political change. The members see themselves as one of the few bridges between the refugee movement and the women’s movement. It was in this spirit of solidarity that Women in Exile and Friends was created in 2011 and activists without a refugee background joined.

FLAMINGO e.V. is a network for refugee women* and children from Berlin-Neukölln and deals with the topics of medicinal herbs, flight, migration and feminist communities within the transcultural medicinal herb garden Hevrin Xelef, which has been established since 2019. The garden is a sister project with the women’s village of Jinwar in north-east Syria. Here, seeds and knowledge about healing, trauma and grief are exchanged in communities. 

Note on accessibility from the work group Municipal Kitchens
Cooking and eating together is a shared language all of its own, so if you don’t feel confident with the spoken language(s) available at this event, please know you are still so welcome.  We have multiple ways of sharing and we look forward to greeting you. We want everyone to be able to access our events, if there are any barriers to you joining us that we haven’t already tackled, please get in touch and we will do our best to support you. This includes providing childcare at daytime events (we will need at least one week’s notice).

Contact: anmeldung@ngbk.de