Cooking Potato Stories

What can a potato tell us about ourselves? What does it say about the construction of national identity? What role can new narratives around it play in creating expanded social imaginaries?

What can a potato tell us about ourselves? What does it say about the construction of national identity? What role can new narratives around it play in how a society imagines itself and other worlds? How can translocal stories and food cultures be connected as an inroad to address forgotten colonial legacies and the wider context of political, social, and emotional relationships?These are some of the questions that lead to the harvesting of stories around the potato that forms Cooking Potato Stories.

This work has its roots in the tension between personal and social identity and the historical and cultural influences on its formation. Using the role of the potato as a conductive narrative, I question the power structures behind the construction of identity, based on my own experience moving between Latin America and Europe. It is a transatlantic recipe that mixes the "here" and "there", which includes different ingredients such as heritage, history, imaginary, tradition and autobiography to reflect on how a society imagines itself and other worlds based in the stories they tell each other.

We all make sense of our lives through a combination of narratives, a blurred system of ideas that inspires reactions, determines values, judgments, opinions and behaviors. Today a region does not necessarily have to be a space defined politically or geographically, but a specific space for common stories and experiences, a state of mind rather than a place on the map. Therefore, finding our place means finding our place in a story and where the plot of these photographs intersect is where my place is located. I propose an encounter of narratives around the potato that grows an alternative story that questions the ideologies, power and subjectivities behind the narratives. I develop recipes of knowledge that unfold different aspects of the potato's history to push a new social memory about it. Cooking Potato Stories drives us in the complex process of how we construct, understand and make sense of ourselves individually and as a collective.

© Ana Nuñez Rodriguez - The perfect migrant
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The perfect migrant

© Ana Nuñez Rodriguez - When you say potato the response is often and autobiography
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When you say potato the response is often and autobiography

© Ana Nuñez Rodriguez - The red bags are used for the seeds
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The red bags are used for the seeds

© Ana Nuñez Rodriguez - Who conquered who?
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Who conquered who?

© Ana Nuñez Rodriguez - Underground Beauty
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Underground Beauty

© Ana Nuñez Rodriguez - Upside down
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Upside down

© Ana Nuñez Rodriguez - The real discovery
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The real discovery

© Ana Nuñez Rodriguez - For years and years
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For years and years

© Ana Nuñez Rodriguez - Soil Layers
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Soil Layers

© Ana Nuñez Rodriguez - Commonalities
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Commonalities

© Ana Nuñez Rodriguez - Buds grow like hair does
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Buds grow like hair does

© Ana Nuñez Rodriguez - Autochrome
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Autochrome

© Ana Nuñez Rodriguez - Planting and displanting
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Planting and displanting

© Ana Nuñez Rodriguez - Commonalities
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Commonalities

© Ana Nuñez Rodriguez - Eating soil
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Eating soil

© Ana Nuñez Rodriguez - Roots
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Roots

© Ana Nuñez Rodriguez - Roots-II
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Roots-II

© Ana Nuñez Rodriguez - Root patriotism
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Root patriotism

© Ana Nuñez Rodriguez - Ours are from here
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Ours are from here

© Ana Nuñez Rodriguez - Recipes from here and there
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Recipes from here and there

© Ana Nuñez Rodriguez - Genome
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Genome

© Ana Nuñez Rodriguez - Arriving to the table
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Arriving to the table

© Ana Nuñez Rodriguez - Tell me what you eat and I will tell you who you are
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Tell me what you eat and I will tell you who you are

© Ana Nuñez Rodriguez - Crossing an ocean
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Crossing an ocean

© Ana Nuñez Rodriguez - Women and plants
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Women and plants

© Ana Nuñez Rodriguez - Devil root
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Devil root

© Ana Nuñez Rodriguez - Displanting
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Displanting

© Ana Nuñez Rodriguez - Potato cosmogonies
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Potato cosmogonies

© Ana Nuñez Rodriguez - A tale of violence
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A tale of violence

© Ana Nuñez Rodriguez - Digging with our hands
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Digging with our hands

© Ana Nuñez Rodriguez - Cooking Potato Stories at FOAM 3h Amsterdam
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Cooking Potato Stories at FOAM 3h Amsterdam

© Ana Nuñez Rodriguez - Cooking Potato Stories at FOAM 3h Amsterdam
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Cooking Potato Stories at FOAM 3h Amsterdam

© Ana Nuñez Rodriguez - Cooking Potato Stories at FOAM 3h Amsterdam
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Cooking Potato Stories at FOAM 3h Amsterdam

© Ana Nuñez Rodriguez - Cooking Potato Stories at FOAM 3h Amsterdam
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Cooking Potato Stories at FOAM 3h Amsterdam

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