I met Marije a year ago when she showed her work at the design fair Salone di Mobile in Milan.

She blew me away with her strong statements on food design, and how she looks at it. 

Marije calls herself a food-artist, she designs food and re-invents it. “Nature food is all ready so perfect that it doesn’t need an extra designer.” Marije designs all acts that have to do with food and how we eat it. Food is her medium. Marije Vogelzang, that’s rituals, habits, traditions, conversations and psychologies around food. Marije explains ” When you design with food, you put this design later in your body. That’s very emotional and strong”.

Graduating from the Design Academy Eindhoven, Marije Vogelzang studied the highly specialized area of “eating-design”. Gaining a reputation for her art, Eindhoven went on to work as a creative force for several food-related businesses before starting her design studio/restaurant Proef (tasting or testing) in Rotterdam in 2004.

When I heard Marije had two installations at Dortyart, we headed to Dordrecht to check it out ourselves.

First of all there was the ‘PASTA SAUNA’, an installation Marije brought to Dortyart as her existing piece (See post Dortyart part one)

The idea is that you join in as a visitor. The Pasta Sauna is a space you enter to get a bowl of freshly cooked pasta, while the boiling water steams the surroundings, creating a sauna. Not only will the pasta make you feel lazy and slow, but the sauna as well!
After you received your bowl with fresh pasta, you can add some basil, parmesan and other herbs to spice up your dish.

The girls making, preparing and serving the pasta are wearing fun jumpsuits with wing-fringes of pasta like tissue. It completes the experience. Ah, yes,and did we mention that the pasta-machines are also music boxes?

After the pasta installation, that she introduced for the first time in NY during Performa 09, Marije created another inspirational project, where again as a visitor you could join in and have a ‘few’ tastes yourself. So I did!

 

The idea is that you join the experience with two. One stands in the middle of the Teardrop, dressed in a cute white protection cape, with golden drips painted on it, and the other participant pulls one of the cords to release a drop of flavour to the participant below. 

“I don’t believe you”

“What did I wanted to do next?”

“How many pigeons are there anyway?”

In this absurd Alice In Wonderland-like installation certain ropes were connected (besides with the pipettes) with fine handwritten tags. The tags contained phrases like “a fly just flew into my mouth”, “I will always be there for you” and “I’m so tired of myself” and are meant to offer a cryptic clue about what to expect from the flavour.
I tried tree of them (others were a bit dried out), and I must admit, not ‘yummie’ tasty, but worth the effort. Participating this experiment is fun, visual and stimulates trust and collaboration.

“More than a visually powerful installation, Teardrop is also a tool for human interaction and play”, Marije confirms on her website.

Marije’s Teardrop and Pasta Sauna were on show at DordtYart, a venue that holds it’s winter sleep untill March 2014.

Wanna hear Marije explain how she works? Check out this video.