LOCATION: Outdoor exhibition in and around Rothoff’s Museum Allotment. MAP.
What can a potato tell us about ourselves? What does it say about the construction of national identity? What role can new narratives around it play in how a society imagines itself and other worlds? How can translocal stories and food cultures be connected as an inroad to address forgotten colonial legacies and the wider context of political, social, and emotional relationships? These are some of the questions that lead to the harvesting of stories around the potato that forms Cooking Potato Stories.
This work has its roots in the tension between personal and social identity and the historical and cultural influences on its formation. The colonial invasion profoundly reformulated relations between plants, people and places. It was, after all, a great plantation and displacement company that uprooted not only indigenous peoples but also plants. The potato, native to the Andes, became a migrant, crossing oceans to settle in distant soils. Through this lens of displacement of people, plants and meanings Cooking Potato Stories reflects on how these intertwined movements have shaped our collective identity.
Ana Núñez Rodríguez is a research-based photographer living and working between Spain and Colombia. In her work she delves into the politics of identity, connecting her own experience of navigating between both cultural realities with other voices. Her work also interrogates colonial legacies linked to the natural world, our national identities rooted in nature, and the relationships between human and non-human species. Ishe examine the material and political complexities of colonial agency developing counter narratives of power and identity.
Ana Núñez Rodríguez has exhibited both individually and collectively at institutions such as FOAM Fotografiemuseum (Amsterdam), Photo Ireland (Dublin), Festival Circulation(s) (Paris), Athens Photo Festival (Athens), Getxo Photo (Spain), ARTBO (Colombia), and Anewal Gallery (Kyoto), among others. In 2023, she published the book Hoja Bandera that was finalist for the Best Photobook of the Year award at Les Rencontres d’Arles (France) and PhotoEspaña (Spain).
