ON FOOD, SINCERITY AND HEALING
BY SANDY HARRY CEESAY




(a review of Alma Lindé’s gourmand performance SMAKA PÅ MITT LIV)

Canapés topped
with ketchup marmalade...
& salami. Scallops...
Russian caviar, avocado cream
with lime-marinated cucumber.
Cod in champagne sauce...
& roasted sweetheart cabbage.


In Smaka på mitt liv, a gourmand performance performed and written by
playwright Alma Lindé for Last Minute Festival II at MDT curated by BAM
BAM FROST and Erik Linghede, the make-shift kitchen in Studio 2 at Moderna
Dansteatern becomes a site for connection, turning story into something with the
potential to warm our bodies and hearts from the inside, transforming our
relationship to not only food but also each other.

The premise seems simple enough. Cook a selection of dishes you like, while
simultaneously telling a room full of people about your life, all while whisking
the sauce, checking the temperature and cutting the salami for the canapés.

The act of cooking usually being tucked away in a corner somewhere,
unnoticeable and separate from the eating itself, but not here. Lindé starts with
inviting us all to sit down and relax. Giving the audience an opportunity to
observe the transformation, catching up with acquaintances at the table, and at the
same time being mesmerized by what is happening right in front of our eyes.

Something we have seen as many times as we’ve experience days in our lives, yet
we turn to each other and say: wow, I’ve have never experienced anything like
this, look how she is cutting that salami, look how she is plating that caviar. My
neighbours at the table all agree. It’s the devotion that pulls us in.

We refill our glasses, and dig in on the canapés, I even put down my notebook so
as to stay more present in the moment. The conversations flow naturally under the
dim light, and bistro-like table arrangements. Every dish paired with a drink, a
Cremant de Bourgogne, or a chilled Riesling.

Between the entrance canapés and the lightly seared scallop, we talk about the
surreality of the work. While running to the fridge, getting supplies, heating the
sauce and preparing the dishes that haven’t yet been pre-prepared in her own
kitchen, Lindé tells the story of the time her father had to go to the ER because of
a frozen falukorv.

It is in this otherwise private, and solitaire act of preparing food for guests, usually
in the kitchen at home, but instead setting up a kitchen in a dance studio, that
Lindé manages to transforms the make-shift kitchen into a site of healing,
renegotiating the relationship between narrative and food, not only ours but her
own.

As the scallops melt on our tongues we are hit with the aftermath of the stories
told during the preparation. A soft tanginess spreads on our pallets, as we discover
the true taste of the story told.

One of a young woman struggling with her relationship to food, but eventually
finding strength to overcome her condition with the help of her friends and family.
When telling her story, through not only words and narrative but with the food and
its flavours, Lindé takes us on a gastronomical journey through her life, and just
as promised we were able to taste it all. The bitterness of poverty, the freshness of
opportunity and the warmth of friendship, and support.

By combining the process of cooking with that of telling one’s own story, Lindé is
able to not only tell us but also make us really experience her words. Every now
and then, suggesting we gather around to grab a plate while it’s still hot, or get in
line for a refill of the Cremant l’anglois she’s so curated to pair with the main
course: Cod in champagne sauce and roasted sweetheart cabbage.

It is this turning inside out of the usual relationship between the story and the
storied, I read as a fundamental desire to connect to an audience in a new way, to
reveal oneself—to tell one’s own story but through once’s passion for cooking,
which can be read as a passion for life, and it is with this sincerity that the work
stays as a warm memory of a meal shared amongst friends, loved ones and
strangers you suddenly feel like you’ve known for the longest of times.

BIO: Sandy Harry Ceesay (he/they) is a Swedish-Gambian interdisciplinary artists, writer and curator. Central to their artistic inquiry is the exploration of identity, memory, marginalization, and power, often approached through a queer and decolonial lens. Originally graduating from Amsterdams University of the Arts as a dancer in 2020, their artistic practice has expanded to include several different mediums such as performance, painting, drawing, video and text. In 2022 they debuted with their first novel Kärlekens Exil (Love Exiled) with Albert Bonniers Förlag. They are currently working on their second novel, amongst other projects.