THE KITCHEN SQUARE
Credits: Anders Bobert
The project Torgets kök was an ethnographic study of a process artwork created in Hallonbergen in 2022 by the architect and artist Elin Strand Ruin. The artwork made visible the nurturing but hidden network of four women by engaging them in an activity they all felt they mastered and felt safe performing in a public context – cooking.
The project had great impact with the public, the women and their friends and relatives, but also for the Sundbyberg municipality and the local property company.
I did a field study in co-engagement workshops, where we cooked meals together and engaged in conversations about how they experienced the project, why they cooked the particular food they did during the marathon, what that food meant to them and what they wanted to express with it and what meaning it had for them personally to be involved in this project, as well as what experiences and new relationships and they gained.
The field study concluded that the project became a way for the participating women to:
- Channel their hidden social power into the public space.
- Experience a great sense of personal meaning by sharing their skills in public.
- Break ethnic or cultural barriers by creating social bonds with people outside their own networks.
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