Jagoda Dobecka (PL)
Jagoda Dobecka is a visual artist based in Wrocław, Poland. She is a graduate of the Eugeniusz Geppert Academy of Fine Arts in Wrocław at the Painting Faculty, and a current PhD candidate at the Jan Matejko Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow. Her practice explores themes such as grief, nostalgia, and longing, looking for ways to collectively experience states associated with loss and elements that provide a sense of security. She is interested in utilitarian art strategies that initiate spaces to establish and expand relationships and change social hierarchies.
Memory plays a central role in explaining nearly every facet of our eating behaviors and preferences. Since nearly all the foods and flavors we enjoy or dislike are learned through exposure, they are inherently tied to memory. It sheds light on why we dislike certain foods – such as those linked to unpleasant experiences, like illness, or those that our brains associate with feeling unwell. Moreover, certain foods—like comfort foods—are cherished not only for their chemical properties but also because of their emotional connections to meals or events we associate with them.
As a form of memory, “nostalgia” carries various meanings, both in general and in relation to food. Much of the literature on food—particularly outside the field of anthropology—draws on the secular idea of sentimentality for a bygone past, treating food as a vessel for childhood and family memories. However, nostalgia can also be understood differently: not as the reliving of an emotional past, but as a yearning for times and places one has never actually experienced. The nostalgic recollection of comfort food, for instance, does not always stem from a genuinely happy childhood; instead, it can serve to construct a fictional narrative of such a childhood.
Interested in loss and collectivity, Jagoda Dobecka regularly organizes cooking workshops as part of her art practice. The project COMFORT IS emerged from workshops conducted with dementia patients at the Clinical Psychiatric Hospital in Rybnik, Poland. Drawing on the concept of sensory memory, this community discussed dishes that bring them joy and a sense of security. Through shared conversations, lost memories of carefree and nostalgic moments surfaced, with food serving as the medium for their recall.
More information about Jagoda Dobecka visit her website: https://www.jagodadobecka.com/
The residency program is supported using public funding by the Slovak Art Council. The Slovak Art Council is the main partner of this project.