Tag: Event

“What flavors place, what place flavors?” Posed by Christina Sharpe in her book Ordinary Notes, this question lingers in the space between land and taste. How does place, how does land, persist even when territory fractures? What stories, histories, and rituals do we carry with us through food? Ingredients, gestures, and tastes become a living archive carried within and through our daily practices of making—kneading, fermenting, grinding, storing, carrying.

Using food as a way to hold and transmit knowledge, during this day of gathering we will come together to activate a newly created tonir-style clay oven and a small stove at Four Siblings. The oven was built during an earlier workshop in May with transdisciplinary artist Tatiana M. Mélo. We will prepare food, cook, and eat together as a way to share knowledge about food systems, forgotten recipes, and lost rituals. We will be joined by Martina Manterola and Carmen Serra, cofounders of colectivo amasijo, an intergenerational feminist collective who work across art, cooking, and land-based pedagogy. They will join us in activating the ovens through their own rituals, practices, and foods. Together with Tatiana we will also be creating small clay structures and sculptures to bake bread inside of.

The residency of colectivo amasijo is part of the Exchanges programme by the Prince Claus Fund, with the support of the Amsterdam City Council.

Ticket: €10
Student and solidarity ticket: €7,50

Buy your tickets via Eventbrite

Location: Four Siblings, President Allendelaan 1, 1064 GW Amsterdam

colectivo amasijo is a feminist collective composed of women from various disciplines and generations, working across art, cooking, and land-based pedagogy. amasijo’s approach centers on collaborative cooking and agriculture as forms of resistance and land regeneration. They are united in their desire to actively reflect on the origin and diversity of our food. Since their formation in 2019 they have been providing a platform for non–dominant voices: the narratives of women close to the land, stories that tell us the real cost of climate change and show us the way towards the regeneration of the land. Through their projects, that can take the form of gatherings, dinners, research, actions, ceremonies, exhibitions, markets, seminars, film, or talks, the collective builds the needed structures to form a community in which taking care of ourselves and taking care of the territory we inhabit is priority. Their practice insists on care, circular knowledge, and embodied time — challenging extractive logics through feminist, decolonial methodologies.

Instagram colectivo amasijo

Tatiana M. Melo is a transdisciplinary artist from Barcelona, living in the countryside of La Garrotxa. She works with clay and ceramics—activating the memory of territory through ritual objects made with stones, ashes, and words gathered from the community. Her practice centers on the transformation of soil into kilns, understood not only as firing tools, but as spaces of encounter, transformation, and ritual. She explores clay as an ancestral material, applying sustainable practices to construction and everyday objects. She has organized workshops and gatherings on collective building, ceramics, and community, collaborating with artists and researchers to rethink the relationship between humans, materials, and the environment.

Instagram Tatiana M. Melo

Four Siblings is a land based art and research project. They come together to create an edible labyrinth in the shape of an artwork in the threshold of the city of Amsterdam. They want to create a sense of belonging to the earth we live on, to the food we eat. They investigate collective ways of generating knowledge and make it as open source as possible.They want to do so in a mutually supportive way—care for our bodies while we care for the land, bring back biodiversity and seed resources, generate new local networks between artists, farmers, permaculturists, and residents, while learning by doing.

Website Four Siblings

tandoor, tannour, tandir, tonir—an ancient underground clay oven. Carrying different names, the tonir belongs to a family of ovens that are found across Central and South Asia and the MENA regions. The oven has always been a central gathering point. In Armenian cultural tradition it was seen as a symbol of the ‘sun in the ground’—existing as a sacred space in the home for baking bread, cooking, and performing rituals. 

During this workshop we will build a tonir-style clay oven together in the ground at Four Siblings, using clay, soil, and sand from their land. Soil is one of the most abundant materials on earth, yet it remains one of the most overlooked. It is an extraordinary material to build with: it breathes, holds thermal inertia, and connects us directly to the land we inhabit. For thousands of years, our ancestors have worked with soil in many ways: growing food, shaping ceramics, building ovens and kitchens to cook with fire, and constructing homes. In many modern societies, however, soil is often treated as waste. How did we end up living so disconnected from such an abundant material?

We will be guided by ceramist, builder, artisan, teacher, and researcher Tatiana M. Melo. In Tatiana’s practice she transforms soil into kilns, seeing them not only as firing tools but as spaces of encounter, transformation, and ritual. For Tatiana, building with earth is also a gesture of remembrance and care: a way of honoring the knowledge of our ancestors and the land we live on. Gathering around fire becomes a space not only for transforming food, but also for reflecting on the narratives that shape how we live and where we are going

In this day-long workshop, we will learn how to understand soil and use it for different purposes as we learn by doing collectively. We will start with a theoretical explanation about soil, earthen plasters, and wood-fired ovens, followed by the collective building of the tonir-style clay oven. Alongside the larger oven, we will also build a small stove.

These kilns will be activated on June 13th, during kiln as kin: a day of gathering, firing, cooking, where we will prepare food, cook, and eat together as a way to share knowledge about food systems, forgotten recipes, and lost rituals.

We will be working outside, so please dress appropriately for the weather. 

Lunch will be provided. There are only 15 spots available!

The workshop is sold out.  If you want to be added to the waiting list in case someone cancel, please send an email to info@w139.nl.

Ticket: €30
Student and solidarity ticket: €20

Buy your tickets at via Eventbrite.

Location: Four Siblings, President Allendelaan 1, 1064 GW Amsterdam

Tatiana M. Melo is a transdisciplinary artist from Barcelona, living in the countryside of La Garrotxa. She works with clay and ceramics—activating the memory of territory through ritual objects made with stones, ashes, and words gathered from the community. Her practice centers on the transformation of soil into kilns, understood not only as firing tools, but as spaces of encounter, transformation, and ritual. She explores clay as an ancestral material, applying sustainable practices to construction and everyday objects. She has organized workshops and gatherings on collective building, ceramics, and community, collaborating with artists and researchers to rethink the relationship between humans, materials, and the environment.

Four Siblings is a land based art and research project. They come together to create an edible labyrinth in the shape of an artwork in the threshold of the city of Amsterdam. They want to create a sense of belonging to the earth we live on, to the food we eat. They investigate collective ways of generating knowledge and make it as open source as possible. They want to do so in a mutually supportive way—care for our bodies while we care for the land, bring back biodiversity and seed resources, generate new local networks between artists, farmers, permaculturists, and residents, while learning by doing.