Cucina é bello! (Cook, it’s beautiful) is the graduation project (2020 Gerrit Rietveld Academie, Amsterdam) of Elena Braida. She invited us to collaborate with her on the concept for participatory art installation. We created the concept of ceramic plates designed especially for the purpose of eating gnocchi within the reenactment of Elena’s inherited recipe of her Grandma.

The ingredients orbit around the u-shaped platform. Some of them are the fruit of collaborations which took place in different cities, made by different hands on very different setting and mood. Others were made in the confinement of my domestic realm. The background of this recipe finds its start in my grandmother’s gnocchi. Her name is Laura and at 86 years old she is the cornerstone of the restaurant of my uncles in Manzano, Italy. (source: Elena Braida)

Gnocchi Plates for communal dinners and multiple plate arrangements.

The restaurant is located in her very own mansion, a rustic one characterised by the u-shaped structure. She lives one staircase away from the dining room and cooks for the customers in her very own kitchen. Her kitchen is located in the up-right start of the letter U. Like every movement, there is a start and an end. Since It relates to a specific period of time, the way the ingredients find their road into the platform is through an act in which the involvement of the viewer becomes the main component of this banquet. I am no longer alone with the ingredients. – Words by Elena Braida