By Hanna Baumann, with co-curators Cherry Truluck, Johann Arens, Miriam Lowack, Alicja Rogalska
It is not every day that you enter a gallery and are met by the sounds of a working kitchen - the clang of tools, chop-chop of knives, and the sizzling of food in a frying pan. The air of the usually sanitised art space is filled with the aroma of unfamiliar spices. Someone tells you that this used to be a fast food restaurant. As you turn the corner, you can see food curator Cherry Truluck working with artists to prepare a meal that reflects the ethos of their work, and you may be invited to have a taste or to join the cooking process.
The exhibition "Municipal Kitchens", which is currently showing at Berlin’s Neue Gesellschaft für Bildende Kunst (nGbK), uses the embodied experience of preparing and sharing meals to bring together new groups and join up global and local debates around food justice. Our curatorial approach is rooted in the belief that public challenges – such as increasing food poverty and malnutrition, the unsustainable nature of profit-driven food production, and social exclusion and isolation caused by individualised care labour – require public solutions. “Municipal Kitchens” highlights the potential of collective approaches to food preparation to alleviate some of these pressures by transforming individual struggles into communal support systems. A range of works by an international group of artists and collectives invites visitors to de-domesticate the kitchen and imagine more just urban food futures.

Panel from Elia Nurvista’s ‘The Route’ (left) and MyVillages / Company Drinks (centre), Municipal Kitchens, nGbK, July 2024 ©Benjamin Renter
As curators, we were inspired by the UCL Institute for Global Prosperity’s groundbreaking research on Universal Basic Services (UBS). This work advocates for the provision of essential services, including food, as a universal right that should be free at the point of delivery – thereby freeing up time and resources for residents to contribute to their communities and economies, without existential fears. With the UK’s new Labour government’s stated focus on public services, it feels particularly important at this moment to stretch our collective imagination on what such services could be and can achieve. Using art and community engagement as a vehicle, the exhibition enables visitors to expand their notion of what possible solutions to the numerous crises facing our food system could look like.
Highlighting the unjust nature of the existing food system, several artworks engage with the colonial past and present of various foodstuffs, such as Indonesian artist Elia Nurvista’s work on palm oil. The exhibition includes works that explore urban-rural relations, such as those by the Dutch/UK artist group MyVillages, and public kitchens that aim to reduce the care burden on individuals, exemplified by the Mexican collective Cocina CoLaboratorio, who draw on indigenous cultivation practices to propose more sustainable approaches. Berlin-based artist Franziska Pierwoss's work on supermarkets as public spaces and potential progressive democratic forces, alongside London-based Company Drinks' community business model, offer new economic perspectives. Regular free-of-charge meals, inspired by the principles of UBS, are also a critical component of the exhibition. These explorations are crucial to understanding how we can transform food from a mere commodity into a common good in cities.

‘Milpa Pluriverse’ Workshop and dinner hosted by Cocina CoLaboratorio, Municipal Kitchens, nGbK, July 2024 © Johann Arens
Thus, "Municipal Kitchens" engages directly and accessibly in policy debates around equitable access to food – which might feel abstract or bureaucratic to some residents – through artistic practices. The exhibition features works in a variety of media, events, and food-related activities including joint cooking sessions and foraging excursions that invite visitors to playfully imagine and test out different ways of producing, distributing, sharing, and recycling food in diverse urban settings. Crucially, the exhibition’s community engagement lead, Miriam Lowack, enabled the collaboration of international artists with Berlin-based food justice groups – so that global food system challenges can be examined in conjunction with their local manifestations, as well as innovative local solutions. In doing so, we hope to bring new audiences into art spaces, and to creatively facilitate the urgent public debate on just, inclusive and sustainable food provision in cities.
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