“Cooking thus transforms us" is a framework Maya Minder weaves like a string through her work. She uses cooking as a metaphor of the human transformation of raw nature into cooked culture, and she combines it with the evolutionary ideas of symbiotic coexistence of plants, animals and humans. She creates entanglements between human commodities and the animism of nature. Following the Biohacker, Maker and Thirdspace movements, she uses grassroots ideas, safe zones and citizen science for collective storytelling through food and cooking.
Maya Minder will lead the research project Green Open Food Evolution - dietetics and endosymbiotic co-evolution to become Homo Photosyntheticus during her residency at the Cité internaitonale des arts. The objective of the research project is to write a recipe book, conceive a performance and prepare an installation of a speculative food program. This research will be accompanied by readings, workshops and dinner happenings. The project will be developed in collaboration with the interdisciplinary artistic research project Roscosmoe - The worm that wanted to go into space initiated by Ewen Chardronnet and the marine biologists Xavier Bailly and Gaëlle Correc (researchers at the Roscoff Biological Station, Finistère – CNRS Sorbonne Universités).