Kitchen Codex

SNAP is pleased to present Kitchen Codex by Patrick Cruz and curated by Christina Battle, on display in the gallery windows from August 28 to October 2, 2021.

Kitchen Codex is a site-dependent ongoing food-based project, collaborative social sculpture, and communal performance. Since 2015, Kitchen Codex has manifested, shared experiences, and collected recipes in various locations and contexts such as Guelph, Ontario, Berlin Germany, Sudbury, Ontario, Mexico City, Mexico, Malmö, Sweden, Vancouver, British Columbia, and most recently online via e-mail exchanges. Participants from the local community were asked to donate a personal recipe in any language in exchange for a Filipino meal which the artist normally prepares and serves. lately, the project had to shift to purchased Filipino snacks due to the limitations of gathering.

Using food as a vessel for sharing knowledge and as a means to view and reflect on personal and collective histories, the compiled recipes will later be printed into a textile cookbook. Co-authored by the local community, Kitchen Codex aims to bridge the ritual of communal eating and sharing cultural awareness through the digestion of history and the joint solidarity of cultural appreciation during times of socio-political divisiveness.

Register for the Artist Talk here

Patrick Cruz is an interdisciplinary Filipino-Canadian artist, organizer and educator born and raised in Quezon City, Philippines currently living and working on the unceded land of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), Stó:lō and Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations. Cruz studied painting at the University of The Philippines Diliman, holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Emily Carr University of Art + Design, a Masters of Fine Arts from the University of Guelph and a certificate in Pochinko clowning. Cruz is a co-founding member of Kamias Special Projects (KSP) a curatorial collective that hosts the Kamias Triennial in his hometown of Quezon City.

Christina Battle is an artist, curator and educator based in Amiskwacîwâskahikan, (also known as Edmonton, Alberta), within the Aspen Parkland: the transition zone where prairie and forest meet. Battle’s work focuses on thinking deeply about the concept of disaster and the ways in which it might be utilized as a framework for social change. Much of this work extends from her recent PhD dissertation (2020) which looked closer to community responses to disaster: the ways in which they take shape, and especially to how online models might help to frame and strengthen such response. www.cbattle.com