Kitchen Talks
An engagement
in the making
world
Kitchen Talks is a series of conversations. It began with a mother and daughter sharing space - cooking, eating, and talking together.
Something mundane became a ritual: a way of understanding our contemporary moment through the eyes of the older generation. With love, gentleness, and curiosity, the first conversation gave birth to a broader inquiry into the importance of exchange.
This project invites people around the world to engage in similar conversations, guided by the same spirit. As we record these encounters - in tone, taste, and narrative - we begin to map the urgencies of our time.
A creative inquiry that gathers recipes, ideas, worldviews, music, art, and design.
The setup:
A table, food to share, a recorder, an interest both want to engage with, opennes, love, patience. An image , a piece of music, a desgn object that is present, used or holds importance.
Kitchen Talks 01 - 26.04.2025
by Nisha Merit
In a deeply personal and reflective essay, Kitchen Talks explores intergenerational dialogue and feminist consciousness through slow Sunday conversations between mother and daughter, set in the intimate context of a shared meal. Prompted by a report on rising femicide in Germany, the text unpacks systemic gender-based violence and questions the binary logic underpinning societal norms. From prehistoric survival to modern-day patriarchy, the text traces how language, religion, and industrialisation entrenched gender roles and suppressed female agency, particularly in relation to motherhood, pleasure, and autonomy. Simultaneously, the essay highlights men’s historical lack of emotional emancipation and questions whether their unexamined privilege also functions as a form of emotional imprisonment. The narrative weaves a philosophical and affective meditation on gender, language, and relationality, proposing a queer lens as a vital tool to disrupt binary thinking and create space for vulnerability, mutual recognition, and non-hierarchical forms of being. Amid technological advances, the essay argues, human development remains stunted by rigid societal constructs, with deadly consequences. Kitchen Talks advocates for a reimagining of personhood and connection - beyond dominance and submission - towards a more compassionate and interconnected world.