Elaborate, performative, communal – the new food experience

Food has always been a unifying material. It brings people and systems together, it speaks to all the senses, it is essential and life-giving, it can be played with, and it can be wasted. But over the last few years, food as a shared experience in all its facets has generated new interdisciplinary fields of work that go beyond common understandings of gastronomy. From sensory experience designers such as Laila Snevele and gastrophysicists like Charles Spence, to eating designers like Marije Vogelzang, food artists such as Laila Gohar, to social political and pedagogical investigators including Nora Silva and Inês Neto dos Santos from Food Cosmogenies, and Grace Gloria Denis.

By looking at food beyond sustenance and aesthetics, it has developed as a practice and become more than just the sum of its parts. Many practitioners are reaching beyond the decorative whilst also balancing working in the realm of sensual aesthetics without labelling themselves.

We are currently undergoing another shift in the disciplinary approaches related to food; one that is linked to climate change and systems thinking. This is bringing with it ways of working that are aiming to be more communal, contextual and cross-disciplinary; mixing bodies of knowledge, creating experiences that are more immersive for all involved.

The interplay of the art of hosting, the medium (of food) becoming the message, the failing systems around us, the perceived access to plenty – all feed together into experiences around food that become layered and complex. At its best, the work of food practitioners, such as Caique Tizzi’s, can provide the opportunity to pause and immerse ourselves in all these complexities – creating space for digestions that bring other forms of nourishment.

SLEEK What does it mean for you to eat together? What do you see as your task, as a chef?

Caique Tizzi Sharing a meal, eating together, being around a table – it’s one of the things that makes us human. I once did a project called The First Supper on food cosmogonies – how things come to be. It was really focused on the first moments of domesticated plants, like corn, which marked the beginning of agriculture. In my research, I found that the first piece of furniture we created wasn’t the bed, it was the table. That gesture expresses a deep need in our species to come together. It’s also been shown to benefit our brain and health. Eating together is a ritual, a celebration – it’s part of our evolution. Cooking itself helped us develop our brains too; by cooking over fire, digestion became easier and more efficient. So eating together isn’t just about sustenance – it’s nourishment in a holistic sense: intellectual, spiritually, and pleasure.

SLEEK Where do you see your work situated?

CT I think that’s up to others – curators, food historians – to define. For me, it’s about expanding how we can eat together and approaching flavour as an aesthetic practice. Coming from the visual arts, I naturally see food as both material and subject matter – material in the sense of something sculptural, but also as a medium to access deeper themes or create shared situations. So I say I’m an artist who cooks. Of course, I draw from people who pioneered this space – those at the intersection of art, food, and science. But I try to expand the field by encouraging others to see food differently – not just as something we eat, but something to think about. Take a pineapple. What does it mean? How does it look, taste, feel? That shift in perspective inevitably changes the way we experience it. I see my work as synesthetic. I try to create installations or displays that are true to the flavours they present. I want to immerse people in feelings, acknowledging the entanglement of perception. When I do something radical – like fire, ash, mess, red color, eating with your hands – I want the flavour to reflect that. The act of eating becomes part of the experience. The mouth is the bridge between the body and the world. I find the tongue fascinating – it’s almost a second brain. It creates language, but it also guides taste and survival. It’s such an intelligent, intimate organ.

SLEEK You create sensual, seductive, participatory, often immersive experiences with food in different spaces. What themes or visions guide your concepts?

CT There are many. I have a method for thinking about each project, dinner, or installation. I always start with: “What’s this called? What’s happening here?” I see the table as a stage. Not just for food, but for nature, for social interaction, for diplomacy. It’s a dignified space, a tool for networking, a device that expresses culture. In many cultures, it’s on the floor. The format can shift, but the idea of staging remains. So each dinner becomes a kind of performance in chapters. Maybe we start with fire – bread, heat, conflict – and that’s the theme of Chapter One. Then maybe water, and the food, sounds, textures follow that idea. The practice is inherently collaborative – nature provides the ingredients, but also farmers, producers, and the team I work with. Even the guests are collaborators. The event doesn’t work without their exchange. I like working with musicians, too, to build a full environment. I also try to personify ingredients – pineapple becomes a character. I dissect it: texture, mythology, symbolism. For example, the pineapple symbolises hospitality and is native to Brazil. There’s a story that when colonisers arrived, indigenous people offered pineapple as a gesture of welcome – although they didn’t know about the brutality that would follow. So I think about the trajectory and spirit of these plants. Most of my projects are site-specific. Architecture is always present in my work. For example, for the Neue Nationalgalerie, I worked with fruits and mirrors that reflected the corners of the building. It was called Fruchtecke –
a fruit corner. I extracted the colours and materials and presented them like a window display. So I try to immerse the work in its context.

SLEEK How do you explore inclusivity through flavour?

CT One of the reasons the work resonates is because flavour is universal. Everyone has something to say about food. That inclusion happens when flavour invites people in. I see flavour as an aesthetic force. There are scientific principles to what makes food pleasurable – balance, crunch, acidity, sweetness. If the food doesn’t taste good, the rest of the experience collapses. No matter how radical or visually interesting, it has to touch you. Flavour is how I include people. The experience needs rhythm, harmony, generosity – not just concept, but connection. The collaborative events tend to be more extreme but many of my solo dinners are seated and paced differently. I act as a host, telling the stories behind each dish and display. Sometimes I throw dishes on the table – literally – but I always explain why. Humor helps. If someone is unsure, I’ll say, “Just use your mouth!” And they dive in. It’s about being responsible for the situation I’ve proposed. Not controlling people, but guiding them. When you’re too in control, it gets boring. But you also need structure. So I reuse techniques that work, while staying flexible.

SLEEK A lot of work, time, research, and preparation goes into your food events – only for it all to disappear so quickly. How is that for you?

CT That’s the nature of my work. All the labor, the research, the sourcing, the dreaming, the testing, the cutting, the plating – the beauty of it is gone in a few bites. Sometimes in seconds. There’s something deeply human about making something just to be consumed. Consumption leads to collapse. It’s ephemeral. That’s why I often use ice in my installations – it’s a metaphor for impermanence and for that collapse. It asks everything of you, but those moments – when someone goes quiet after a bite, when a room falls into stillness, when a stranger reaches for a piece of bread and something shifts – those are the real rewards. That’s the gratification. Instant, but not shallow. I give all this time and attention to something that won’t last. And in return, I get presence. It’s a lot of work but it’s an honest exchange: I make something. You eat it. We feel something together. Then it’s over. And that’s the art.

SLEEK Your guests often become protagonists. And holding space for that, catering for like 200 people with all these moving parts, how do you manage that intensity?

CT Food is such a powerful, accessible material. We can talk about politics, ecology, society through it. The table becomes a space for negotiation. Events like these make people reflect on how they behave in moments of sharing, even simulated scarcity. Because eating is so banal, radicalising it invites people to think differently about everyday life. And at the same time there are so many parts: food, timing, people, light, props, cutlery, how things are served, how people move – it’s a lot. But at some point, I learned to treat it like a living organism. You prepare as much as you can, and then you have to surrender a little. Let the thing breathe. I spend weeks building the concept, planning logistics, assembling the team. By the time we’re serving, I’ve already made a thousand decisions. In the moment, I focus on the feeling in the room, the energy, the rhythm. I’ve learned to trust the work, and to trust others. I delegate. I don’t try to control every detail. You can’t – it’s a social space. Also, I work with people who understand the language of the work, and we move together, there’s a rhythm that comes from doing this over and over again. It’s not magic. It’s experience, sweat, and a bit of madness.

SLEEK Why do you think food experiences are so en vogue right now – especially in fashion and design?

CT Because we’re living in a time of crisis. Look at history – the decline of the Roman Empire, there were all these feasts and excess happening. So I think it is an announcement somehow. But also, I think it’s connected to our maturing relationship with social media. First, food was just photographed. It showed where you went, who you are. Then brands started to refine how they use food visually. Food design, huge butter sculptures, trends exploded. I’ve worked with food since 2011, and back then I had to explain myself. Now I don’t – it’s more accepted. But of course, there’s copying and standardisation, which is frustrating. Some of it feels like a façade. You can often see in the images what’s real and what’s just for show. Food is easy to love, it’s needed. We’ll see where it goes.

SLEEK Also, food is such an ephemeral material – how do you capture what you evoke, especially for those who weren’t there?

CT That’s a big question. I try to honour the process behind it. The research, the ideas, the conversations, the choices – those don’t disappear when the plate is cleared. I document what I can. I keep my notes, sketches, ingredient lists, reference images, recipes. All the menus are archived.

I’ve started filming the events – not just the food, but the gestures, the atmosphere, the way people move and interact. But honestly, my favourite form of archive is the guests themselves. They carry it. They become a living memory. They leave with something you can’t really grasp: a taste, a sensation, a strange little moment they might not even be able to describe. That’s how the work continues – quietly, inside someone’s body, inside memory.

SLEEK What’s your comfort food – your emotional home?

CT So many things. I love eating. Beans are huge for me – as a Brazilian. Corn too – just boiled with parmesan, a perfect summer dish. When I eat alone, I like simple food. Comfort food is what I grew up eating, like Feijoada. When my husband makes lasagna, that’s a joy. When my mom cooks, that’s home. I love ice cream, I could eat it three times a day, even for breakfast. I love eating lunch for breakfast! Food is a love language.