Marije and the Food
Eat love Budapest project : that was the first thing that drove my attention towards Marije Vogelzang. A wonderfully curated project where Roma women fed people by hand or with spoon while telling their life story. It should be noted that there was no eye contact between the feeder and the fed as they where both sitting behind long white curtains. Roma minority and especially women are marginalized in our society. The cause of this project was to make people understand Roma, enhance integration through food culture. When asked, Marije explained the roots of her inspiration using this quote from Immanuel Kant : ‘If you break bread together you’re less likely to break each other’s neck’.
I was too impressed not to search further about Marije. And became even more impressed to find out that this self acclaimed ‘eating designer’ has created a field on her own; design experiences through food. She has graduated Design Academy Eindhoven where she was educated in product creation. But she decided that food would be her field. Back then in 2000 there was not such thing as an eating designer. Firstly she launched two experimental projects and then moved on to food projects. These included installations, exhibits, consultations and social experiments for Dutch Design Week, Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum and Cooper Hewitt, just to name a few. Today she is the head the new Food Non Food department at the Design Academy Eindhoven and founder of the Dutch Institute of Food and Design as well.
At this point you must wonder : and what does she actually do? So let me take you on a small walk through some of her other projects. The above picture is taken from Seeds project in collaboration with Caesarstone that will take place in the upcoming interior design show in Toronto next winter. A honeycombe like installation will welcome visitors and a chosen seed will ‘guide’ them through grinding, cooking and tasting. Food preparation is seen here as a part of nature and human connection.
Here you can see a Plantbones project picture where objects are similar to animal bones but grown from vegetable cellulose. Doesn’t it provide an interesting vegan eating experience?
Faked meat was inspired by the need to replace soulless food such as ‘soy ham’ with food maked of invented animals such as the above vegan steak; it is made of Herbast, an invented animal that grows herblike fur to hide from predators so its square shaped meat is preseasoned…!
And bread. Yes bread is having a moment among food designers …such a powerful material. Here Vitra Bastard Bread is made from swiss zopf, french baguette and german dark sourdough.
Marije also works with porcelain. The collection above is part of the Volumes objects project where objects are directly placed on the plate between food as to give more attention to the food presentation; that might change mindless consumption behavior as she claims.
She also creates those and several others strange shaped eating objects which she sells on a vending machine outside her studio in Dordrecht, where she lives as well with her family. She is a mother of three. And a wife. And a remarkably stylish woman. I was attracted to her beautifully painted fingernails, the maginificent hairstyle and her interesting coloured way of dressing. My theory of noticing that remarkable women of our times have a stong sense of personal style has been confirmed once more. Those ladies create new realities and their clothing materials are a huge part of them.
As you can see here Marije has plans for Netflix as well. Would be more than keen on what she has in mind. For the time being enjoy a little bit of her on camera spark …
