Be inspired by a selection of Slovak and international artworks that look at food and everything connected with it from different angles, and kick-start your creative thinking! In the article, you will also find prompts for discussion and ideas for activities. They can be used in secondary-school teaching, connecting the fields of art and culture with civics, multicultural and environmental education, and personal and social development. However, they are suitable for anyone who wants to experiment with unconventional materials, develop discussion, get their acquaintances involved, and, last but not least, add some variety to their menu.

Eating as a Social Event

We all eat food, several times a day. Even so, under certain circumstances, even such an ordinary activity as having lunch can surprise people or create a specific situation. During the former regime, action artist Ján Budaj, together with the group Temporary Society of Intense Experience, created various, often absurd situations in the public space of the city. Their aim was to pull passers-by out of their routine lives and prompt them to think or participate. During the action entitled Lunch, a small group of people sat down at a table in the middle of the city and began to eat lunch. In the photographs documenting the action, we do not see other people, only views from the surrounding apartment blocks.

Ján Budaj, Temporary Society of Intense Experience: Lunch II, 1978.

Would it surprise you if such a small “feast” took place under your window? Would you try to find out more about the action, perhaps approach the participants or join in? Would you associate an ordinary lunch with an action aimed at communicating with its surroundings?

Rirkrit Tiravanija: who´s affraid of red, yellow and green; first presented in 2010 in Bangkok, Thailand. Recording from Art Basel, Switzerland, from 2011.

Activity idea: Organize a challenge for a wider circle of your acquaintances – meet in one place at an agreed time, with everyone bringing food to share. Do not be afraid to invite, for example, your neighbors or a teacher, and let the invitations spread freely.

Photo: Šimon Lupták

Etiquette teaches us that we should not eat with our hands, but direct contact with food can be an experience—not only a gourmet one, but also a stimulating, calming, and ultimately artistic one.

Magdaléna Kuchtová: By Eye and by Touch, 2020. The work was exhibited as part of the Group Therapy exhibition at Schaubmar Mill in Pezinok, photo: Martin Deko

The installation by intermedia artist Magdaléna Kuchtová, entitled By Eye and by Touch, consists of the ingredients and tools needed for baking sourdough bread, something the artist has been engaged in for a long time. On the table there is flour, water, and a sieve, as well as that which makes it possible for all these things to create the desired result – hands. Touching the flour, they also encourage us to touch ordinary ingredients and perhaps to slow down in everyday life, or to have the therapeutic experience that sensitive and patient work (not only) with sourdough starter and dough can bring. In this way, the artist attempts to express artistically “working with one’s hands and with material, and the pleasure of the result”.

Have you ever baked your own bread or pastries at home? Apart from taste, in what ways did you notice the difference between homemade and store-bought?

Photo: Šimon Lupták

Participants in the Meetup at the SNG course had the opportunity to touch food with their hands and work with it as an artistic material. Under the guidance of Dana Tomečková, also an intermedia artist, they explored how particles of powdered sugar react to touch and how differently they can be shaped depending on how close they are to one another. They then observed the formed shapes over a longer period of time – sugar absorbs moisture well, which makes it firmer and allows it to remain in its shape. Dana chose to work with sugar not because of its sweetness and the properties for which it is used in the kitchen, but precisely because of its physical properties and composition.

Try looking up interesting scientific information about an ingredient you will use the next time you prepare something, and you can verify it directly during the preparation process. Did anything surprise you?

Photo: Šimon Lupták

Activity idea: Turn touching food into a creative and exploratory experience! Dig your hands into several types of flour and use your sense of touch to notice the differences in their texture; observe how cinnamon falls onto different surfaces; watch how various liquids disperse in water… Allow yourself a more eccentric touch as well, such as oil on your hand. What feelings do these encounters with the material evoke in you, and what visually caught your attention about them? Give yourself enough time to notice every drop or grain, as well as the changes that foods undergo through different kinds of contact.

Photo: Šimon Lupták

The production and distribution of food is, not only in ecological terms, one of the most discussed issues of the present day. It affects each of us every day, but at the same time also the functioning of our entire planet.

In his works, intermedia artist and ecological activist Oto Hudec explores the relationship between humans and the landscape in a local environment, but also through many trips abroad, as is the case with the work entitled Corn Song, in which the artist performs his concert in front of a cornfield in the USA. The work shows how far today’s profit-oriented cultivation of genetically modified corn, with an approach that shows absolutely no respect for the landscape, is from the traditional cultivation practices of the Indigenous peoples of America. They believed that singing to corn would ensure its better growth. The artist raises several local and global issues brought about by this kind of monoculture cultivation. Is it possible in today’s world to once again arrive at a sensitive approach to the environment in which we live?

Artbase / Oto Hudec. YouTube channel Kunsthalle Bratislava, 2021. You can find the work Corn Song at 9:14 – 9:27.

Through many of his works, sculptor Juraj Meliš expressed attitudes related to ecology at a time when this topic was only beginning to resonate in art in this country. He often worked with text in his practice. The aluminium relief – a world map from the Help series – works with a single word. However, it is so forceful and understandable that it clearly refers to the critical situation concerning our planet. The work was created almost 50 years ago, when the topic of the climate crisis was not as serious as it is today, yet we still sense a great urgency in it. At the time it was created, ecological questions were already entering the awareness of wider society here, but, for example, the Ministry of the Environment was not established until 1990.

Juraj Meliš: Help. From the Help series, 1975 – 1978.

Activity idea: Can a tomato or a loaf of bread influence events in several countries? Set about examining your meals in more detail through their origin and the journeys they took before reaching your plate. Set aside a certain amount of time in advance for your research, for example a few days. Pay attention to food packaging, labels and menus. For every meal you eat, try to find out where it comes from. Prepare a sufficiently large world map, or work with one digitally, and mark the given country on the map. What does the result of your activity reveal? You can examine the ratio between local and imported foods and the length of the journeys they have travelled. What advantages could greater support for local ingredients bring?

Menu inspired by art

Do you feel that you keep eating the same thing and that preparing food literally annoys you? Although man does not live by food alone, with the right inspiration even this activity can give a boost to creative thinking!