kiln as kin: a day of gathering, firing, cooking

“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.

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

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

collectivo 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

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