Root Vegetable
This project began with a simple curiosity: how to let Korean and Dutch kitchens speak to one another through the quiet languages of stems, leaves, and roots. It wonders how techniques carried in a grandmother’s hands might find new resonance in north-west European soil, and how memory can fold itself into unfamiliar ingredients until something both old and new begins to emerge. By making dishes such as soybean-based red beet pickle (장아찌 in Korean) and kohlrabi salad dressed with vinegar and red chili flakes (생채 in Korean), the work lingers on the small negotiations of taste, touch, and time that accompany every act of remaking. These gestures grow into illustrated essays—part recipe, part remembrance—recalling moments such as washing and trimming fragile vegetables with a grandmother, and tracing paths of knowledge passed through markets, seasons, and generations while articulating procedural skill alongside historical context. Here, the idea of transplantation stretches beyond cooking, becoming a way to think about how we take root in places far from where we begin: rooted in one place, learning to grow in another. The work ultimately aims to generate insights into how individuals navigating cultural displacement or intergenerational longing may access new forms of orientation and experiential understanding. Documentation will appear here as the work develops.