Politics at the Kitchentable. Nutrition in Contemporary Art

23/05/2026 - 04/10/2026

How do we eat today, how do we wish to eat and live in the future, and what consequences will this have? The international group exhibition “Politik am Küchentisch / Politics at the Kitchen Table” examines individual as well as societal – and, therefore, always also political - aspects of food and nutrition, together with their ecological, economic, and social entanglements, through the lens of contemporary artistic works.

Within biological and cultural cycles, we are shaped by what we eat. At the same time, through our choices we exert an influence on the environment that surrounds us, so that through our actions we continually re-form the state of the world - at our own kitchen table and in the social act of eating together. In this exhibition, various sociopolitical and ecological dimensions of food and nutrition are explored from an artistic perspective.

In the current Post-Anthropocene, the close entanglements of human action with the ecological crises - crises that are shaped not least by the way we eat - are becoming ever more apparent. As human beings, we are biologically dependent on the intake of energy in the form of external nourishment, and at the same time our diet is culturally conditioned, symbolically charged, and socially determined. What we eat defines us, and simultaneously exerts an influence on the environment in which we live and whose products we consume. In this, food and nutrition are always more than merely a question of energy. They not only shape our wellbeing, but also configure our being in and with the world on the most varied of levels.

Over the course of recent centuries, eating habits have shifted time and again, most markedly at particular turning points such as industrialisation. Today, in the Post-Anthropocene, we find ourselves once more at a crossroads at which food production plays a role that should not be underestimated. It is becoming ever clearer that the way we eat shapes our relationship to the environment and plays a significant part in the exploitation of the Earth’s resources. It makes a difference what each individual person consumes on a daily basis, how it is grown, potentially transported, processed, and distributed. At the same time, we move within certain systems that inform or enable our actions and decisions.

In search of forward-looking, environmentally and socially sustainable paths, the artistic approaches gathered here offer a speculative space that, through various micronarratives and frequently humorous modes of access, opens up new perspectives on what appears to be an everyday necessity of life. One of the most urgent questions of our time seems to be how, within current or alternative systems and their respective political frameworks, we can eat responsibly - not only reducing social injustices, but also preserving and protecting ourselves and the Earth from, on, and with which we live.

Curator: Julia Katharina Thiemann