TRANSIDENTITEITSTAFEL

Developed during my residency at BijlmAir, *Transidentiteitstafel* approaches “trans-identity” as a conceptual space of transition and negotiation that transcends gender and sexuality. Drawing on my experience as an immigrant artist and chef—and referencing Édouard Glissant’s *Poetics of Relation*—I use food as a medium to explore identity, national belonging, diasporic memory, and cultural imaginaries.

The project centers on a wooden cart that transforms into a dining table. Designed to transport prepared food and the necessary equipment, it allows me to create temporary gastronomic spaces on the streets of Bijlmer and elsewhere in Amsterdam. For each intervention, I set the table with a tablecloth, tableware, and pre-prepared dishes, while leaving certain elements open to be completed through interaction with the public.

I invite passersby to taste the food and engage in conversation about the origins of the ingredients and the dishes we share. In this way, the table becomes a meeting point where food, memory, and diverse cultural trajectories converge through the act of eating. As an ever-evolving project, I am currently developing additional elements—including new tablecloths and tableware—to be incorporated into future interventions, allowing the material and social dimensions of the table to transform with each new iteration.

During the residency, I also held a recipe workshop, coordinated by CBK Zuidoost and Imagine IC. In it, we explored our relationship with food—its origins, its histories, and the collective, familial, and personal myths surrounding it—as well as how food is transformed through the participants’ traditional and everyday culinary practices. All of this was examined in relation to their backgrounds, migration experiences, and current lives in the city, to collectively create recipes.