Through the lens of cooking, the kitchen is distinguished as its own bubble often categorized as the subordinate, private, “domestic sphere,” opposite of the male dominated public sphere centered on production in the city. In questioning this common narrative of public and private spheres, I investigated the evolution of the modern kitchen that coincided with the feminist movement in the late 1920s and Anna Puigjaner’s studies of the kitchenless home. Existing collective kitchens like Comedor Popular in Lima or Chamanga Community house in Ecuador serve the community beyond food, creating a new infrastructure where women congregate, kids are raised, and the community shares recipes and meals all in one space. Influenced by these earlier investigations, I discovered the need to transform the kitchen threshold in East Harlem through the blending of public and private space. Where the kitchen is no longer a separate entity, but is instead intertwined with everyday activities and practices. Despite the restrictions in establishing traditions of food after migration, restaurants found in Harlem today demonstrate how the ritual of cooking responded to new spaces, and how the spaces responded back, ultimately showing its interdependence. The transformation of these kitchen spaces can be imagined through the traditions of sharing recipes and cooking collectively, influencing me to rethink the kitchen as a space of resistance and collaboration between those who share history and the looming danger of losing their space due to gentrification.
In creating Platano Collectivo, the introduction of plantain as the ingredient that connects those who share its importance in their history and recipes creates the opportunity to interchange ancestral knowledge and rituals in the kitchen. With this, the kitchen serves as a system that engages cultivation, nurturing, community, and care.
