Three weeks after reopening from a year-long sabbatical Kunsthalle Lissabon had to close its doors due to the COVID-19 pandemic. It felt frustrating and disheartening to go into withdrawal again. Togetherness and friendship are part of our institutional DNA but those qualities are temporarily vetoed as likely carriers of the infection.
Over the years, we have been to countless restaurants together, we cooked for people and were treated to beautiful home cooked meals in return. In the process we made incredible shows and books together.
It seems unlikely for the near future to spend time together, to enjoy each other's (physical) company, to cook for and share a meal with people we love. We know we will miss that. We already do. Everyone does. In response, and throughout countless WhatsApp groups, live feeds, any available social media actually, friends are sharing recipes and images of what they are cooking.
There is way too much free time on our hands these days, some would say. True. But we say that since we can't share an actual meal with our friends we exchange instructions and photos of those meals. Chains of people cooking gnocchi from scratch have been established and they are spreading, in what could be called a sort of togetherness by proxy.
We experience the joy of eating together the best we can given the conditions we live in. Alone in our apartments we engage in the digital partaking of our individual experiences of cooking and eating as if we were sitting at the same table laughing, eating and drinking. We share recipes because we want others to feel the same we do, we want to be part of a community of shared experiences because that is what keeps us human. In a way, togetherness is what you make of it.
We will start sharing recipes with you. We will ask our friends, people who have been part of our life for the past decade, whether artists, curators, writers, technicians, sponsors, audience, etc, to share their recipes with us and with you. We want to feel that food still connects us, that it still brings us together despite social distancing. We want to not be isolated and food can help us in breaking the distance between each other. Needless to say, this is not about art. Sometimes art is not the answer, food is.
Alberta, Arantxa, João and Luís.