Recipes for Creatures of Habit

How can a work participate in the food chain?

‘Recipes for Creatures of Habit’ is a work that came into existence during a collaboration with Platform Dis for their project ‘Voed ons Voedsel’ (‘Feed our Food’). The project dives into food consciousness: being conscious about what we eat, how we grow it, and how our food patterns are affecting non-human species. Monocultures that numb the soil microbiome, city birds picking at littered fast food, and removing ‘intrusive’ weeds rather than using them as medicine, are a few examples. ‘Voed ons Voedsel’ questions how all organisms can eat each other equally and regeneratively.

In ‘Recipes for Creatures of Habit’, I use fruits and vegetables that would otherwise be wasted to make my own materials for this project: edible papers and inks. Making and passing on recipes is a form of storytelling, a way to preserve knowledge and tradition. With recipes we take care of others, we share, and we heal. The process of recipe-making for human and non-human life is a ritual that asks me to not only cook for myself and the viewer, but also for the soil.

As a result, the making process becomes a symbolic recipe to heal the distance in how we take care of different forms of life when it comes to our eating habits. The work becomes part of the food chain itself, as it can feed both humans (as food) and land (as compost), nurturing the soil that has grown the very material it exists from.

‘Recipes for Creatures of Habit’ is an ongoing project, in which I am in the process of making my own materials to print images. In 2026 I will be focusing on making edible inks as well as printing methods.