Cooking Potato Stories by Ana Núñez Rodríguez
By Jang Kapgen | Magazine | October 1, 2022
Cover Illustration: A sprouted potato. Anabella Villanueva/The Amsterdammer
Magazine Reporter Jang Kapgen provides the reader with a fascinating and detailed description of their impressions of a creative art exhibition centered on a food staple: potatoes.
I have never really liked potatoes – Gromperen, as we call them in my native tongue. Cooking Potato Stories by Ana Núñez Rodríguez might have changed my opinion. The interdisciplinary art series focuses on the intimate ties between the earthy vegetable and our cultural heritage – and with our, I mean our. Núñez Rodríguez’s work challenges the viewers to turn to their own relationship with the potato and reflect on tradition, taste, landscapes, and this special feeling of home. The interesting twist, however, is that she invites the viewer to investigate this relationship by openly showcasing her own connection to the potato throughout her life – in the Columbian, Dutch, Portuguese and Spanish context. The exhibition, curated by Claartje van Dijk, includes selected videos, photographs, and written texts and is on display at Foam Museum until July 10, 2022 and takes visitors on an emotional and earthly journey.
Núñez Rodríguez has been interested in the dynamic between culture and the multiplicities of identities since the very onset of her artistic education. After having studied photography and cultural heritage in Portugal, Spain, Colombia, and the Netherlands, she recently graduated with a Master’s Diploma in Photography and Society at the Royal Academy of Arts The Hague in 2020. Cooking Potato Stories was part of her graduation show, quite successfully as she won the Master’s award in her department.
This exploration of the cultural and personal meanings of an object, space, or food in relation to history and power has been one of her ongoing interests. In Hygieia from 2017, Núñez Rodríguez documented hotels through black and white photography. She illustrated these spaces as temporary homes, whose history is consistently removed. In her own words, while exploring this dynamic, “Hygieia dignifies the work of the hotel maids.”
Núñez Rodríguez’s project Banana Massacre from 2018 displays an even more explicit take on the concepts of space/object and power. To commemorate the massacre of United Fruit Company workers (now part of the Chiquita corporation) in a Colombian town in December of 1928, Núñez Rodríguez transformed the Chiquita logo into an homage to the leaders of the workers’ strike. “Through the use of images, I establish new forms of collaboration and knowledge production that interrogate the impacts of collective memory and cultural heritage on identity.”
I identify her practices as creating a non-hierarchical dialogue between an artist and many voices, bending the productive limits of documentary photography and artistic research. This practice is a fundamental element of Cooking Potato Stories.
Before the viewer actually enters the exhibition space, the beautifully written exhibition text sets the tone: “When you say ‘potato’ the response is often an autobiography; potatoes provide a way for us to speak about ourselves” Earle, Rebecca (2019). Following this introduction, the visitor enters a dim-lighted warm room and is confronted by a sense of comfort, tradition and home. A (potato-)floral wallpaper on a chimney, soft yellow painted walls and a wooden floor set the scene. On the right side, a pile of potato sacks is positioned, provocatively displaying the words “the perfect migrant” all over them. On the left side, old-fashioned furniture invites the visitor to sit down while a vintage television displays different traditional potato recipes. Would you like to grab one and start peeling? The printed-out recipe for potato tortillas is even offered on the table for the visitor to take home with them.
While the mise-en-scène and curation perfectly play into this nostalgic theme of heritage, the written words and photographs on the wall are what truly make the exhibition stand out. Living between South America and Europe, Núñez Rodríguez has experienced the beautiful and cruel heritage of the humble vegetable herself. Each corner displays a different memory of the potato in written text and photographic visualization, ranging from a dialogue between Núñez Rodríguez and her grandmother, formatted as a theater piece, with conceptual photography of potatoes – to a Dutch farmer boy talking about the beauty of potato flowers, written as prose, with still-life photographs. While colonialism, myths, heritage, food, taste, the potato flower, and laughter are all in contrast and symphony, the viewer can dive into personal and intimate moments of both familiar and unknown cultures.
Even though the exhibition does only showcase a selection of Cooking Potato Stories by Ana Núñez Rodríguez, her work takes you on an unusual journey, which (as I already said) made me rethink my own relationship with Gromperen. As much as each individual story within Cooking Potato Stories is unique, the intricate dynamic among the pieces makes the exhibition a true acknowledgment of the potato – as a food, as colonial heritage, as a memory.
Jang Kapgen is a student at the University of Amsterdam. The views expressed here are not necessarily those of The Amsterdammer.
