Tandoor to Comixcal: Public Ovens and Cross-Cultural Flatbreads
Year:
2024
Location(s):
Jamiltepec, Oaxaca, Mexico; Materia Abierta Studio, Colonia Escandón, Mexico City, Mexico.
Co-authors:
Sameer Farooq
This project—a collaboration with Toronto-based multidisciplinary artist Sameer Farooq and Mexican architect Octavio Castro Gallardo—explores public ovens and cross-cultural flatbreads in Mexico and beyond. We are undertaking a program of creative research that extends work that Sameer and I began in February 2023 during the Visualizing Foodways Field School (Mexico City, 17-22 February 2023) that I curated and in which Sameer was a collaborator. During the most recent phase of our nascent collaboration we activated the tandoor oven that Sameer collaboratively created for the VFFS, and extended the research to explore the comixcal and other ovens of the Istmo de Tehuantepec region of Oaxaca, Mexico.
How does building with earth nurture cultural memory?
In July 2024, architect Octavio Castro Gallardo and I built a sculptural earthen oven on his mother’s land near Huaxpaltepec, in the Costa Chica region of Oaxaca, Mexico. Documentation of, and reflections upon, the building and activation of these various ovens, our field notes, and resources for building and cooking will be compiled in the forthcoming risograph publication Seven Ovens: Field Notes.
Resources::
Loremipsum
Collaborators:
Octavio Castro Gallardo, Perseida Tenorio, Maestra Adelita, Don Toño, Na’ Griselda & family, Katrina Santiago & mother; Queti Gallardo Macayo, Gustavo Castro de León, Marino and Materia Abierta.
Support:
The Canada Council for the Arts