For the 2025 Biennale, the Geneva-born artisan is interested in bread, plants, and sharing. In the dough that rests, ferments, and bakes; in the stories it tells. In the herbs that grow in our landscapes, the ones we notice while walking, often trample underfoot, sometimes gather and cook. She also highlights the importance of intergenerational transmission to reclaim knowledge and skills tied to food and daily life. An independent publication (French only) featuring her research is available via this link.

Throughout spring 2025, through a series of encounters with local bakers, farmers, artisans, and producers from the cantons of Vaud and Fribourg—including professional forager Françoise Rayroud—Aziadé Cirlini explores the diversity of breads and plants in Switzerland, and their historical evolution from a transcultural perspective. In a society shaped by globalization and the standardization of food practices, bread and plants—their materiality and symbolism—become for her a field of exploration and questioning. A playground to experiment, to shape stories that can be eaten—and in turn, reinvented.

During the Biennale, she will cook around thirty wood-fired sandwiches each day. These will become ephemeral, story-bearing objects—telling tales of her walks, her encounters, and the tastes and smells gathered along the way. She will also produce a small illustrated publication in the form of a fanzine, available for consultation at the Kitchen / Central Space.

Residency 2025 

These four sessions in this ecopedagogy programme with the school Plan Dessus are modeled after various principles of agroecology, implementing the foodscapes of Vevey as living classrooms. The residency period was accompanied by research on the territory, generating a cartography of local ecopedagogy initiatives such as the Forest School with the class of Sabine Karambalakis and the Eco-Schools. This is part of a larger, ongoing corpus of research which will be disseminated in an upcoming fooduculture days editorial project, examining the convergence of ecopedagogies and sensorial pedagogies as a way to catalyse relations to local foodscapes.

Session I - Biodiversity 

The first session commenced with a conversation about biodiversity, using beans as an introductory metaphor, which was followed by the hand building of a series of ceramic bowls inspired by the diverse shapes of beans. The ceramics aspect was assisted by Maud from 1800 Degrés in Vevey.

Session II - Biodiversity and Economic Diversification

During this session that delved further into biodiversity, students planted various bean varieties as part of a collaboration with Alex Baumgartner, learning more about their benefits and nutrient cycling, while also examining examining the implementation of beans in multiple culinary forms ranging from dry to canned, from hummus to flour, from chips to desserts. The group documented their seed-to-soil experiences through multimedia approaches, taking photos of each other and generating a small podcast about their relationship to beans. The session culminated with a small walking tour of nearby foodscapes, including a public vegetable garden and the micro farm Praz Bonjour's seedling market, to understand the economic dimensions of food cultivation.

Session III - Co-creation of Knowledge and Recycling 

This session commenced with a tour of Praz Bonjour’s micro farm and continued with an on-site activity that examined the co-production of knowledge through a lexicon of agroecology. The lexicon mapped a series of verbs tethered to land stewarding and agency, which were transcribed onto various upcycled kitchen towels and napkins. This lexicon was rendered into a tablecloth and panel, engaging a collaboration with textile artist Elena Braida, whom assembled and produced the piece.

Session IV - Coproduction of Knowledge

The final session of the programme includes the glazing of the bean-shaped bowls and the fabrication of a series of postcards around beans and biodiversity that will be implemented during the public presentation at the foodculture days’ urban orchard in June. The students will engage in a co-curation of the images, collectively selecting the images for public dissemination, alongside proposing two bean dishes from their contexts to be cooked for the public presentation.the notion of sensorial pedagogies and ecopedagogy, implementing Vevey's foodscapes as living classrooms. Rooted in the Latin American pedagogical tradition, this research on the territory of Vevey hypothesizes that co-creation practices can critically respond to planetary transformations through the consideration of Guattari's conceptualization of three ecologies.

Leveraging urban and peri-urban agricultural spaces, the project is modeled after agroecological principles such as biodiversity, rendering a series of actions that include the planting of heirloom beans with swiss artist and researcher Alexandra Baumgartner and generation of a lexicon of agroecological actions. Central to the methodology are sensorial pedagogies, drawing inspiration from Denis' previous research on sonic ecologies and anthropologist Anna Tsing's "arts of noticing," traversing conventional linguistic knowledge transmission, while weaves a complex tapestry of sensate knowledge bridging agricultural practice with immersive educational engagement.

The culmination of the residency manifests as a public presentation at Verger Urbain during the context of the biennale in June, featuring a communal tasting of student-proposed bean dishes served in their handcrafted, legume-inspired ceramics. Inspired by the agroecological principle of synergies, this multisensory engagement with the public is complemented by an audio transmission of student-produced podcasts and the distribution of documentary postcards.

Special thanks to Heba Bieri for supporting the continued collaboration with Plan Dessus.

A HOME CARE II is co-curated within the frame of the "WHY DOES THE FLAMINGO LOSE ITS COLOR?" artistic program by VU.CHUV - Art at the Hospital (Lausanne) in partnership with foodculture days.

Originally trained in interior architecture, Monika Emmanuelle Kazi is interested in how our bodies are conditioned by living spaces and the elements that surround us. Following her first collaboration with foodculture days in 2023 (A Home Care machine learning, in which she occupied the kitchen space), the artist continues her exploration, this time focusing on the laundry room. For Kazi, this water space is often relegated to the margins of artistic and social narratives, despite the fact that it crystallizes processes of transformation, rehabilitation, and purification.

In A Home Care II, a duo of performers engages in a ritual of mutual care, exploring the emotional weight of routine gestures and their potential resonance beyond the domestic space. This work extends the artist's research on bodily memory and machine learning systems, questioning how everyday gestures shape our identities and are transmitted as movement repertoires inscribed over time. If machines learn through repetition, so do our bodies. Washing gestures—whether related to laundry, skin, or surfaces—form a living archive, a silent language that testifies to our individual and collective histories. Through a performative staging, Monika Emmanuelle Kazi weaves connections between self-care and care for others, between intimate memory and historical narratives. By diverting the primary function of the laundry room, A Home Care II transforms this space into a site of interaction and transmission, where dynamics of repair and reappropriation unfold. Far from being a mere place of maintenance, the laundry room becomes a space of rewriting, where each gesture resonates as a committed and poetic act.

Bellies to Fill tells the story of the artist’s mother and grandmother, while also being contextualized through the artist’s own narration. The video features assembled footage showing the mother and grandmother cooking and preparing meals, as well as recordings of the artist herself cooking, followed by an evening shared with friends—eating, drinking, and talking. The spoken text narrated by the artist, weaves together the story of three generations into an emotional portrait. It gives visibility to the often invisible and meticulous preparations of a meal and reflects the identities of three women navigating between Vietnamese heritage and Western society.

More about Sobremesa Visual Art Exhibition here and the Guided Tours here.

This installation is based on the practice of making feeders for garden birds during the winter months. Although wild birds can endure the weather conditions, there is a belief that they depend on people to survive. Some bird lovers feel responsible and rewarded for being an active part of the bird food chain.

This empathetic gesture may mask a deep desire to control and condition our natural surroundings. Bird feeders are a great way to attract birds to one's garden, perfect for people who enjoy watching birds and listening to their singing. The sculptures in the installation are reminiscent of that garden space. Made from birdseed, they suggest the possibility of taking empathic desire a step further into domestication.

More about Sobremesa Visual Art Exhibition here and the Guided Tours here.

This project explores seeds as cultural heritage and common good – shaped by both human and non-human influences. Through visits of dedicated seed keepers and community seed banks, she collects stories around practices of preserving, developing, and exchanging seeds. As the work unfolds, seeds become trusted guides and the embodiment of resilience.

Highlighting the drastic loss of crop diversity due to industrial farming techniques and market concentration, Baumgartner reflects on the cyclical nature of seeds and their role in creating bonds between human and plant life. Imagining plantiness, her work invites emotional connection as a pathway to transformation, portraying gestures of quiet resistance against the erosion of cultivated biodiversity.

During the foodculture days Biennale, a selection of the photographs will be displayed in an open-air exhibition in the public space of Vevey and la Tour-de-Peilz. Check the map here.

A site specific installation of new sculptures, reappropriated from the extraordinary story of a woman who submerged five sets of fine china underwater to protect them from a fire explores the paradoxes of trauma, fear and preservation.

The installation takes an archaeological approach to industrial porcelain tableware molds, using them as symbols of personal reparation, societal reform, and forms of resistance, examining how intimate spaces become sites of political consciousness.

More about Sobremesa Visual Art Exhibition here and the Guided Tours here.

Unicorns are a recurring theme in the Malerduo Bošković-Scarth’s work, serving both as trendy, kitschy motifs and as projection surfaces for nostalgia and escapism. Inspired by their ambiguous existence—ubiquitous yet unreal—and the long history of debates around their existence dating back to antiquity, they propose Einhorn Spezialitäten AG: an installation that mimics a shop selling unicorn specialties.

The shop will feature a range of fictional products made from or with unicorns — from water-purifying horns (historically narwhal tusks, sold by Inuit communities to Europeans as "unicorn horns") to unicorn cheese and meat. Each product engages with familiar ideas people associate with unicorns, while simultaneously opening up questions about the commodification and consumption of magical objects.

The project also critically reflects on the aesthetic and cultural practices surrounding the consumption of animal products — and their substitutes that aim to look and taste the same.

Since unicorns don’t exist, the inevitable question arises: what exactly are these products made of?

More about Sobremesa Visual Art Exhibition here and the Guided Tours here.

Cacao is a food native to Mesoamerica that is still part of the culture of that territory today. Colonial plundering and its introduction in Europe initiated a long history of extractivism, monoculture, human and territorial exploitation, mainly in the African continent. This video-performance addresses the gesture and pose of advertising images through an indigenous body in movement, intervening spaces involved in the Swiss tradition of chocolate.

More about Sobremesa Visual Art Exhibition here and the Guided Tours here.

Lisa Lurati is an artist who uses photography as raw material in her work, exploring ancient techniques such as cyanotype, developed in the 19th century. This method uses iron salts sensitive to ultraviolet light, applied to paper or fabric. Inspired by the fascinating work of English botanist Anna Atkins, known for her “Photographs of British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions” published in 1843, Lisa Lurati uses cyanotype in a painterly approach to create large, mysterious canvases. She describes these works as an imaginary documentation of nature, combining existing elements with invented ones.

In the frame of foodculture days, the Brazilian artist duo formed by transdisciplinary artist Anelena Toku and musician and sound artist Carla Boregas present ‘Fronte Violeta’, a series of interventions  based on their 10 years of multidisciplinary research and projects.

In an assemblage of sonic and olfactory gestures, the  interventions consist of a  performance,  a site specific installation and sound interventions during the biennale. Shifting between collective engagement and individual experience, the works choreograph the senses into ephemeral narratives that nourish the relationship with our surroundings.

For the performance, the duo collaborates with illegal gelato™ project by artist and artisan Götz Bargende.

More about Sobremesa Visual Art Exhibition here and the Guided Tours here.

Petal Politics Fleur Cacao is a ceramic invocation of the tropical blossom at the origin of chocolate, rendered not as ornament but as offering. Echoing the cauliflorous flowering of the cacao tree, where life erupts directly from the trunk, this piece embodies fertility and the unseen labor of pollinators. Each cacao flower lasts only a single day, a fleeting presence that underscores the precarity and beauty of transformation. In this transience lies a quiet urgency: life blossoming briefly, demanding witness.

Infused with the scent of vanilla, the piece deepens its sensory and symbolic charge. Native to Mesoamerica like cacao, vanilla carries with it the layered histories of ritual, extraction, and desire. Its aroma, warm, sweet, and universally evocative, echoes the soft, milky sweetness of early nourishment. Though chemically distinct, vanilla shares a comforting resonance with the scent of breast milk, evoking primal memories of care and intimacy across cultures. Vanilla’s scent transcends borders and cultures, linking memory with the warmth of care, the pleasure of indulgence, and the hunger for sweetness. Vanilla becomes both balm and indictment: a scent through which sweetness reveals its role in the architectures of extraction. and empire.

Like much of Chaveli Sifre’s work, Petal Politics Fleur Cacao draws from Caribbean cosmologies and the material wisdom of plants to reframe the botanical as both sacred and political. It invites participants to reflect on material culture and its influence on our surroundings and contemporary realities. The discussion centers on chocolate, the extraction of goods from the Global South, the politics of consumption, and the hidden costs of certain indulgences. Here, the cacao flower becomes a vessel: for scent, for memory, for the many histories embedded in a blossom.

More about Sobremesa Visual Art Exhibition here and the Guided Tours here.

This project explores the notion of sensorial pedagogies and ecopedagogy, implementing Vevey's foodscapes as living classrooms. Rooted in the Latin American pedagogical tradition, this research on the territory of Vevey hypothesizes that co-creation practices can critically respond to planetary transformations through the consideration of Guattari's conceptualization of three ecologies.

Leveraging urban and peri-urban agricultural spaces, the project is modeled after agroecological principles such as biodiversity, rendering a series of actions that include the planting of heirloom beans with swiss artist and researcher Alexandra Baumgartner and generation of a lexicon of agroecological actions. Central to the methodology are sensorial pedagogies, drawing inspiration from Denis' previous research on sonic ecologies and anthropologist Anna Tsing's "arts of noticing," traversing conventional linguistic knowledge transmission, while weaves a complex tapestry of sensate knowledge bridging agricultural practice with immersive educational engagement.

The culmination of the residency manifests as a public presentation at Verger Urbain during the context of the biennale in June, featuring a communal tasting of student-proposed bean dishes served in their handcrafted, legume-inspired ceramics. Inspired by the agroecological principle of synergies, this multisensory engagement with the public is complemented by an audio transmission of student-produced podcasts and the distribution of documentary postcards.

Special thanks to Heba Bieri for supporting the continued collaboration with Plan Dessus.

This project represents the restitution part of "An Ecology of Encounters: Residency".

In this project, the artist duo takes the Burek — a portable pastry humbly rooted in traditions from Turkey to Eastern Europe — as a starting point to explore themes of exodus and the notion of home. Its simple, unleavened dough evokes the circulation of ingredients and how a recipe often adapts to its surroundings, while its familiar taste recalls the domestic space of the kitchen and the hands of grandmothers.

The work will be created in situ on May 24 during the Picto Bello painting day at Place du Marché in Vevey. By bringing the motif of the Burek into public space, the artists invite passersby to react, reflect, and nourish the work with their own associations. Their artistic practice embraces public interaction as an essential part of the creative process: comments, memories, and spontaneous conversations actively shape the evolving work, making the public not merely witnesses, but co-creators in a shared exploration of themes common to both Picto Bello and foodculture days: home, familiarity, and our relationship with the unknown.

More about Sobremesa Visual Art Exhibition here and the Guided Tours here.

What is a tradition?
Where do you stand ? Hein ?
In the depths of a country
By the blown winds
I'm the old-fashioned mad king
Sovereign of memories
Which become statutes

"Cooking Mama Series has its roots in the 2008 "hunger riots" in Cameroon, two years after the artist left Cameroon to live in France. "Hunger riots" are violent popular uprisings triggered by rising fuel and food prices, making food inaccessible to a large part of the population. The event highlighted the precariousness of food security in Cameroon, its growing dependence on massive imports of basic foodstuffs, and a deterioration caused by the globalization of agricultural trade. In France, events related to the "Yellow Vests" movement echoed those of 2008 in Cameroon. The "Yellow Vests" movement was characterised by large-scale demonstrations and protests against rising fuel taxes, the cost of living and economic inequality. As a Frenchman of Cameroonian origin, these two movements resonated with the artist. They are two protest movements that reflect the tensions going through the two countries that saw him grow up, and both are a popular refection of economic hardship and a sense of social injustice.

It is from these tensions that Bisso conceived of the everyday and the vernacular as a place of sharing as well as of conflict. Cooking Mama Series explores the tensions between traditional and contemporary, between local and global. This installation highlights the processes of invisibility of knowledge and cultural heritage, questioning the dynamics of exchanges stemming from colonial history and its in influences on everyday life.

More about Sobremesa Visual Art Exhibition here and the Guided Tours here.

Co-curation: Margaux Schwab and Adriana Domínguez - La Capsula (Zurich)

SOBREMESA offers the public an unusual artistic experience by presenting works outside the traditional institutional box, to showcase types of places of conviviality and culture that are sometimes unknown to the general public. This proposal complements the programme of foodculture days, offering well-known and traditional artistic formats (sculpture, image and video in particular), to create a contrast with the performative, relational and collaborative projects that are also part of the Biennale 2025.

In collaboration with restaurants and other venues that are related in some matter to food, foodculture days displays a range of recent fine art works by young Swiss and international artists to encourage thinking with the public about the role and place of contemporary art in the face of current social and environmental issues. Sobremesa showcases socially and politically committed artistic practices using traditional media to turn art into a catalyst for debate and ideas on urgent matters of our time. The title of the exhibition comes from an untranslatable Spanish word that evokes the time spent around a table after a meal, during which the conversation goes on, sometimes for hours. It is an intimate and convivial moment that encourages the exchange of ideas.

Sobremesa Exhibition:
Einhorn Spezialitäten AG, Malerduo Bošković-Scarth (Lorenz Bachofner Bošković (CH) & Vincent Scarth (GB/IT)
Burek in collaboration with Picto Bello, Malerduo Bošković-Scarth (Lorenz Bachofner Bošković (CH) & Vincent Scarth (GB/IT)
Petal Politics Fleur Cacao, Chaveli Sifre (PR)
Fronte Violeta, Anelena Toku & Carla Boregas (BR)
Untitled, 2022, Lisa Lurati (CH)
Tools for Birds Hospitality, Sergio Rojas (CR)
Bellies To Fill, Thi My Lien Nguyen (CH)
Fundición, Neyen Pailamilla (CL)
Where the table ends, Yasmine El Meleegy (EG)
Cooking Mama Series, Yann Stéphane Bisso (CH)

For the 5th edition of foodculture days, the collective of architects and artists continues the development of the Kitchen / Central Location project, which began in 2023 for the last Biennale. This time, they are focusing on the construction of an autonomous cooking area, a kitchen, and a textile project.

Imagined as an earth movement, the kitchen emerges from the ground and takes shape according to the terrain in which it is embedded. Rising from the soil, it is formed using terracotta bricks, weaving a direct link between nourishing earth and culinary preparation.

Vegetarian lunch and dinner will be served from 6-9 (See schedule above)

Guided Tour of SOBREMESA Visual Art Exhibition in the public space.

This year, the Biennale will continue to place great importance on mediation and raising awareness of art and culture among audiences who are distant from the traditional cultural offering. While art spaces have long privileged one of the five senses—sight—through contemplation and aesthetic pleasure, foodculture days proposes to combine this with the other four senses. It questions the role of taste and the other senses as channels for knowledge and awareness. How can flavors and sensory experiences contribute to the appropriation of artworks?

Building on a pragmatics of taste—which suggests that the means used to grasp an object influence the effects it produces—this edition will offer an ecology of mediation and awareness experiences, ranging from immersive guided tastings to collective cultivation actions and participatory workshops offered free of charge to various audiences in the region.

Guided tours are organized with outreach program responsible and educator Lana Damergi in venues hosting the artworks of Sobremesa. These visits will offer a deeper understanding of the works and stimulate the senses of taste, sight, and touch. The outreach responsible will present an item to smell, taste, or touch, as suggested by the artists themselves. The goal is to enrich the visitor experience and create an invisible bridge between participants.

If you would like to organise a tour with a school-class or a group from 5.06 - 20.06 (finissage), please contact us via info@foodculturedays.com

Photo Credits: Beatrice Zerbato, 2023

These visits highlight the work of female farmers and producers whose remarkable dedication inspires us. They aim to raise awareness about the challenges and importance of sustainable, life-respecting agriculture, while introducing the concept of solidarity-based vegetable basket sales — a model that enables advance payment for harvests, provides financial support during low seasons, and ensures consumers receive a regular supply of fresh, local, and high-quality produce.

The opening of the 5th edition of the foodculture days Biennial features an immersive, edible artwork by Japanese artist Lei Saito.

In her practice, Saito explores the hybridization of culinary traditions and art through what she calls “existential cuisine.” Her work examines cooking as a metaphysical gesture, weaving a dialogue between art history, mythology, and language, and engaging the public in a sensory experience where interaction lies at the heart of the artistic process.

Registration recommended via this Form

Passiflora is an ensemble that unfolds sound as a living matter — porous, expansive, in constant negotiation with its surroundings.

Influenced by experimental electronic fusion and acoustic improvisations, the project weaves Afro-Brazilian percussion, resonant echoes, distorted melodic lines, and a constellation of analog textures. Each set emerges in real time, shaped by the friction and intimacy between the artists, their instruments, and the ambient space. Generated live, sounds and samples blur the boundaries between composition and happening, inviting a shared act of listening where traces, accidents, and resonances coalesce into a collective pulse.

The border is not just a threshold or a transitional space: it is a place of intensity and conviviality. In permaculture, the “edge effect” refers to the zone where two ecosystems meet, creating an environment rich in biological and relational diversity. In the practice of Vevey-based dancer and choreographer Valentine Paley, the danced gesture meets agricultural and domestic gestures, gaining a deeply rooted and sensitive dimension.

The most interesting things happen on the margins is grounded in this attention to the in-between: between bodies, between disciplines, between artists. For foodculture days, Valentine Paley presents three original choreographic and musical interventions — Rave-Broth, Soil, and Mouth (Chewing) — which resonate with works by other artists invited to this 5th edition. Each activation becomes a space for dialogue, where movement and food weave new ways of exploring the commons. Like soil cultivated at the edges, this project explores the power of the margins and the strength of encounters.

Bouillon-Rave will be followed by a light meal.

Guest Artists

Collectif Tumulte (Micaël Vuataz, Samuel Boutros, Yann Hunziker, Camille Tissot)
In echo with the intervention by Aziadé Cirlini, Mélissa Rouvinet, Sébastien Tripod – “Cuisine Ouverte”

Photo: Ⓒ Marc Papotto

The Assembly questions the standardizations of contemporary, predominantly Western food culture. Taking the table as a central paradigm of culturally shaped eating practices, the project aims to identify and implement both practical and discursive alternatives. It positions itself as a contribution to transforming current food culture, with a focus on urban contexts in Switzerland, particularly Basel and Vevey. The project launches at the foodculture days in Vevey. The first phase, Sympose!, centers on a blank white canvas on the floor, inviting reflection on the aesthetic and social significance of the table in relation to food and communication.

Individual tablecloth by Arts of the Working Class.

As an extension of Grace Gloria Denis’ residency and research on the territory, this round table unfurls the notion of ecopedagogy nourished by the perspectives of the collective microsillons. In a cross-pollination that convenes reflections on education, art, and ecology, this exchange valorises the cultivation of collaborative knowledge construction and methodologies of actualizing Paulo Freire's stance of learning "together, through the world" through direct ecological engagement. The Lexicon of Agroecology, co-produced with the students of Plan Dessus subsequently curated and produced by textile artist Elena Braida, will be presented as a cartography of actions illustrative of ecopedagogy in practice. This participatory dialogue examines myths of perpetual growth, overproduction, and extractivism implementing sensorial methodologies in  dialogical practice and place-based inquiry. 

During foodculture days Biennale 2025, Grace Gloria Denis will also present An Ecology of Encounters: Restitution and Edible Alliances: Cereals and Legumes together with Aziadé Cirlini.

Departing from the Katzenwedelwiese project in Karlsruhe, this new season of the editorial cycle “The Climate of Art” will center the agroecological, naturecultural practice of orchard meadows, typical from southwest germany and north Switzerland, as a blueprint for bioeconomic models of more-than-human collectivizing.

illegal gelato™ is a culinary installation and a sensory immersion through a unique tasting experience: that of gelato, and the absurd and intense pleasure it provokes in us. It might also be a cleverly crafted sales concept, a playful exploration of desire, accessibility, and prohibition: Why do we always crave what we cannot have? What drives humans in their endless pursuit of pleasure and transgression? Through this traveling project, the artisan-artist invites us to experiment and reflect on what eludes us and what unsettles us.
illegal gelato™ will undertake a residency in the Vaud region to meticulously source ingredients that reflect the Vevey area and its contradictions

Climatologist and former Green National Councilor Valentine Python invites us to reflect on the promises — and dangers — of so-called “new generation” GMOs. Presented as miracle solutions to climate and food crises, these genomic techniques nonetheless raise many questions: do they truly serve sustainable agriculture, or do they reinforce an industrial model based on dependency and uniformity? How can we meet current seed needs in the face of the climate emergency, and navigate a landscape marked by increasingly complex challenges? This dialogue aims to deconstruct the narratives of technological innovation to refocus the debate on issues of diversity, peasant autonomy, and ecological justice — at the heart of food sovereignty.

Format & Participants

Guided tour of Alexandra Baumgartner’s photographic exhibition in Vevey with Valentine Python, Climatologist and scientific consultant. In French.

Shelving Seasons invites you to experience the shifting rhythms of the year through brewed and distilled flavors drawn from the Northern Black Forest. The duo traces the seasonal transitions that reveal cycles of scarcity and abundance—patterns long mirrored in traditional preservation methods. The fleeting nature of seasonal ingredients has historically shaped our food cultures, captured in techniques like fermenting, drying, smoking and distilling. With modern refrigeration and freezing, our relationship to time, flavor, and place has changed. What role do the seasons still play in the products that surround us? How are the landscapes embedded in the things we consume?

In partnership with Celeste Café/Bar, the duo will present two drinks that explore these tensions—between past and present, abundance and absence—through tactile, tickling flavors. They are served from a coolbox grown from mycelium and wool, evoking both age-old practices of storing and new rituals of sharing.

Smoky Cherry Soda 0%

Abundant red fruit flavours dominated by sour cherries, with aronia and black currant lending complexity. A hint of earthy beetroot adds depth, seasoned with juniper berries, caraway, and smoked cherry leaves.

Ingredients: sour cherry, black currant, aronia, beetroot, juniper berries, caraway, angelica root, smoked cherry leaves

Meadow Distillate 32%

The taste of meadows below the cherry trees. Meadowsweet, clover, and wild grasses, dried and aged, release irresistible sweet floral aromatics. Cold-infused cherry pits for times of scarcity. Fungi extracted sugars and flowery flavours from pearl barley grains.

Ingredients: pearl barley, Aspergillus oryzae, Pilsener yeast, meadowsweet hay, cherry kernels

Under the Same Sun: Cuando el maíz nos unió is a participatory culinary and community experience that pays homage to corn as a bio-cultural archive, weaving connections between memory, identity, care, and resistance across Latin America and Switzerland. Over the weekend, the collective invites participants to engage in collective acts of food transformation in La Cuisine/Lieu Central: shaping arepas, preparing and wrapping hallacas (Venezuelan tamales), and discovering fermented drinks inspired by both chicha and kombucha.

These practices carry knowledge passed down through generations — from their mothers and grandmothers, and those no longer present. As stories rise with the steam from the wood-fired oven, the collective celebrates the transgenerational transmission of recipes and the notion of reciprocity.

By bringing together local and Latin American diasporic communities in Switzerland, the project creates a space of belonging and reflection on the cultural practices that shape these hybrid identities. The relational practice of cooking, sharing, and remembering becomes an act of reclaiming cultural heritage as a diaspora.

This project, part of the Transmission program of the 5th edition of the Biennale, is a collaboration between Alexandra Baumgartner, foodculture days, and the Swiss Museum of Games. It explores the cultural and ecological significance of seeds through play and storytelling.

Drawing inspiration from the family of sowing games (mancala) — and more specifically from its most well-known version, Awalé, which uses seeds as playing tokens — the museum will host two workshops where participants will create personalized game boards using special fava bean seeds from Sortengarten Erschmatt.

This hands-on experience will introduce participants to the rules of Awalé, which reference agricultural practices and the notion of cultivation. It invites them to explore the role of seeds as a common good, and their importance in sustaining biodiversity and agricultural systems, through the history of these ancient games.

Workshops: 07.06 (Kids) + 09.06 (Adults/Seniors) - More info & Bookings: Musée du Jeu

For this occasion, Currà invites the public to share a listening space through a reading dedicated to the ancient Calabrian tale of Re Pipi, one of the first feminist texts in the history of the region where food becomes a space of resistance through erotic power. The space will be embroidered with poetic and material fragments that will lead guests to experience trasloco as a magical practice. The ongoing research project experiments the mover body (traslocatrice) through shared practices. Participants will receive an edition of the fairy tale revisited through the technique of Crush Notes: a linguistic rubble, remnants, discards, poetic notes of the traslocatrice.

The practice lasts approximately 30 minutes and includes a final sharing session.

The research project is granted by the Italian Council program (2024).

The border is not just a threshold or a transitional space: it is a place of intensity and conviviality. In permaculture, the “edge effect” refers to the zone where two ecosystems meet, creating an environment rich in biological and relational diversity. In the practice of Vevey-based dancer and choreographer Valentine Paley, the danced gesture meets agricultural and t domestic gestures, gaining a deeply rooted and sensitive dimension.

The most interesting things happen on the margins is grounded in this attention to the in-between: between bodies, between disciplines, between artists. For foodculture days, Valentine Paley presents three original choreographic and musical interventions — Rave-Broth, Soil, and Mouth (Chewing) — which resonate with works by other artists invited to this 5th edition. Each activation becomes a space for dialogue, where movement and food weave new ways of exploring the commons. Like soil cultivated at the edges, this project explores the power of the margins and the strength of encounters.

Guest Artists

Aïcha El Fishawy

In echo with the intervention by Larissa Tikki – “The Dinner Party”


Photo credits:
1. TF23 Vevey © Yuri Sory Plonger

PITXANTU - sound archives, is born from deep listening during different walks through the pitxantu or pitxa forest located in the territory where Eli Wewentxu lives and where his family has lived for several generations in Gulumapu - Wallmapu, Mapuche territory. Field recordings, soundscapes, sound walks, synthesizer layers and some melodic lines with bowed string instruments and txompe make up these works, which seek to narrate an internal perception of the constant dialogue with the territory, which in turn perceives and listens to us.
This work is dedicated to the Mapuche political prisoners and to the people who live day by day in territorial resistance.

Credits photo: 1.Feyd Angeles
2. Rakuto Makino

This dinner, cooked in collaboration between artisan and cook Aziadé Cirlini and artist Grace Gloria Denis, articulates the link between legumes and cereales, in an edible echo of the research of artist Alexandra Baumgartner. Dishes will transmit certain intercroppings, such as chickpea and wheat, rendering networks of nitrogen fixation and companion planting into a comestible offering. Booking recommended.

During foodculture days Biennale 2025, Grace Gloria Denis will also present An Ecology of Encounters.

During foodculture days Biennale 2025, Aziadé Cirlini will also present La Boulangerire.

AAITF presents a DJ set that blurs the lines between musical genres, creating immersive soundscapes that showcase bold artistic expressions transcending traditional club music. For the 5th edition of foodculture days, and with an avant-garde and Afrofuturist vision, the duo will take us on a journey through sounds, chants, and rhythms connected to the history of agriculture, moments of harvest, cultivation, and our ancestral relationship with the nourishing earth.

This performance grows out of Alexandra Baumgartner’s long-term project How like a leaf I am, shifting focus to a curated collection of legumes – fava, lupin, peas, lentils, lablab, and more. Legumes, members of the Fabaceae family, are known for producing pods – single-chambered capsules that hold their seeds. In most cases, it’s the seeds – the beans, not the whole fruit, that we eat. Celebrated for their ability to fix nitrogen and support climate-resilient farming, legumes are key to the future of food, yet remain underappreciated in Switzerland. In anticipation of a plant protein revolution, Baumgartner stages an encounter with these remarkable plants. In an intimate gathering at the central kitchen, the collection is activated in a semi-scripted performance. Here, seeds become storytellers – evoking ancestral knowledge, colonial entanglements, scientific perspectives, and emergent farming practices. A conversation between seeds, farmers, researchers, and the public takes root.

"Heritage" is a living culinary work, co-created by Clara, Sophie, and their mothers. Through a shared meal, they pass on the gestures, flavors, and memories of Brazilian family recipes, while adapting them to local Swiss ingredients. This sensitive practice bridges two cultures, two territories, and explores how heritage can be reinvented far from its land of origin. It is a celebration of feminine transmission, connection to the land, and culinary creativity as a language of memory, identity, and encounter.

From Crop to Culture: Situated Knowledge and Cultivated Diversity
— A guided tour & dialogue with Adèle Pautrat (Seeds4All), Gérald Huber (farmer and president of BioVaud), and Alexandra Baumgartner

This exchange invites a participatory reflection on the principles of agroecology in the face of climate challenges, starting from the importance of seeds. By combining perspectives from agriculture, science, and political engagement, it aims to explore forms of innovation that are practical, resilient, and situated. As a concrete example, the cultivation of fava beans in French-speaking Switzerland will be discussed with Gérald Huber, president of BioVaud and committed farmer practicing direct seeding and intercropping with wheat and fava beans. His experience will ground the discussion in a living practice oriented toward the future, where agriculture appears as a culturally interconnected activity based on care, diversity, and autonomy.

Format & Participants:
Guided tour of Alexandra Baumgartner’s photographic exhibition in Vevey with Adèle Pautrat (Seeds4All), an advocate for agrobiodiversity, exploring how farmers adopt diversified and locally adapted seeds to face climate change. And Gérald Huber (BioVaud/GIREB), an organic farmer from Aubonne with 12 years of experience in agricultural advisory, organic farming, and soil cover crops, co-founder of GIREB, an independent group promoting on-farm research and innovation. In French.

The border is not just a threshold or a transitional space: it is a place of intensity and conviviality. In permaculture, the “edge effect” refers to the zone where two ecosystems meet, creating an environment rich in biological and relational diversity. In the practice of Vevey-based dancer and choreographer Valentine Paley, the danced gesture meets agricultural and domestic gestures, gaining a deeply rooted and sensitive dimension.

The most interesting things happen on the margins is grounded in this attention to the in-between: between bodies, between disciplines, between artists. For foodculture days, Valentine Paley presents three original choreographic and musical interventions — Rave-Broth, Soil, and Mouth (Chewing) — which resonate with works by other artists invited to this 5th edition. Each activation becomes a space for dialogue, where movement and food weave new ways of exploring the commons. Like soil cultivated at the edges, this project explores the power of the margins and the strength of encounters.

Guest Artists

Mouth (Chewing) with Indra Berger & Matthew Franklin
In echo with the intervention by Grace Gloria Denis – “Ecology of Encounters”
Sunday 8 June 2025 18:30-19:00

Photo credits: Frau Troffea ©Aline Paley

The name says it all: The Entertainer transforms every evening into a musical experience – sometimes relaxed and atmospheric, other times wild and ecstatic. Whether it’s smooth grooves to set the mood or driving beats to get you lost in the moment, he’s here to make you feel welcome and keep you moving.

Under the Same Sun: Cuando el maíz nos unióis a participatory culinary and community experience that pays homage to corn as a bio-cultural archive, weaving connections between memory, identity, care, and resistance across Latin America and Switzerland. Over the weekend, the collective invites participants to engage in collective acts of food transformation in La Cuisine/Lieu Central: shaping arepas, preparing and wrapping hallacas (Venezuelan tamales), and discovering fermented drinks inspired by both chicha and kombucha.

These practices carry knowledge passed down through generations — from their mothers and grandmothers, and those no longer present. As stories rise with the steam from the wood-fired oven, the collective celebrates the transgenerational transmission of recipes and the notion of reciprocity.

By bringing together local and Latin American diasporic communities in Switzerland, the project creates a space of belonging and reflection on the cultural practices that shape these hybrid identities. The relational practice of cooking, sharing, and remembering becomes an act of reclaiming cultural heritage as a diaspora.

The Dinner Party is an artistic and performative installation that pays tribute to Black multimedia artists through a dinner gathering. Its title echoes Judy Chicago’s iconic 1979 work created for the Brooklyn Museum. Conceived as a tribute to women throughout history, Chicago’s installation imagined a fictional banquet bringing together 999 female figures who shaped Western culture. Yet, with the exception of Sojourner Truth, no Black woman was included. This absence becomes a creative opportunity: one to reimagine an installation where artists of African descent are invited to share a meal. Much like Chicago’s work, this project raises a fundamental question: Which artists are considered historical subjects?

The table, a central element in the original installation, is here reinterpreted in the form of a quilt. This choice references the role of textile archiving—used notably by artists such as Faith Ringgold—and highlights the importance of this medium in transmitting cultural memory.

Integrated into the dinner, the quilt later becomes a witness to the event. Its delayed exhibition will allow a broader audience to access the experience lived during The Dinner Party. The aim is to highlight the notion of audience in two distinct forms: that of the dinner, composed of diasporic artists who, within the Swiss art scene, explore culinary vocabulary through various forms (texts, installations, films, painting, photography, hosting); and that of the audience who, later, will encounter this experience through the exhibition of the Quilt.

The Dinner Party is an exclusive event open only to the invited artists:

Cassiane c. pfund / Magia & Maldição, an anti-recipe

Diambe / Dangbé

Gemma Ushengewe / Le hérisson noir

Hirma Ndayiziga / eatwithhirmies

Jessy Razafimandimby / Droit de Visite de Digestion

Keiran Aimée Chapatte / Miamcredi

Monika Emmanuelle Kazi / A Home Care – Machine Learning

Tara Mabiala / Sweet Chili of Mine

Tanya Moyo / Kitchensprosper

Yann Stéphane Bisso / Cooking Mama

Additional contributors:

Food: Gloria Kabe

Quilt: Rafael Kouto

Embroidery: Sofia Clementina Hosszufalussy

Curator: Larissa Tiki Mbassi

BREAD Collective in collaboration with foodculture days

Through interviews, participatory workshops, and discussion groups conducted in 2024 in Vevey, the two collectives explored local food practices within transcultural urban contexts. The NLD project aims to highlight the food knowledge of citizens and food communities, to identify needs related to sustainable food systems, and to support entrepreneurial initiatives, particularly those emerging from diasporas.

The Citizen Assembly "Eat in the Hood" marks a moment of sharing and exchange around the findings collected, and opens pathways to strengthen knowledge-sharing, social ecology, plurality, and the sustainability of local food systems. The assembly is open to all and will be followed by a convivial meal featuring regional products.

Constellation is an intergenerational and family project centered around cooking, in which the culinary artist Isciane, a.k.a. Isciyo, invites the women in her family to come together and create two meals during the course of one day. A nod to the family constellation, a method in systemic psychology that focuses on relationships and bonds within a system—in this case, a family—Constellation is a reflection on transmission and heritage. Combining the different practices of the women in a convivial and reassuring atmosphere centered around food, Constellation is the search for a common language among the women of the same lineage.

These visits highlight the work of farmers and producers whose remarkable dedication inspires us. They aim to raise awareness about the challenges and importance of sustainable, life-respecting agriculture, while introducing the concept of solidarity-based vegetable basket sales — a model that enables advance payment for harvests, provides financial support during low seasons, and ensures consumers receive a regular supply of fresh, local, and high-quality produce.

Soundcloud ArtMaillé

A milpa is a polyculture. Throughout Abya Yala (the Americas), maize has been sown alongside beans, squash, chiles, quelites, and many other varieties. Alongside these crops, rituals have also sprouted: songs, flutes, and percussion to call for rain or celebrate the harvest. There is cumbia campesina, son de la caña, and the album Siembra by Willie Colón and Rubén Blades.

Now let us imagine a DJ set as a mix of sounds and rhythms that, like herbs and seeds, invite us to dance and cultivate a sonic milpa in a shared space.