Taste: The Consumption of Imaginary Boundaries within our Heritage Sites
Chapter 1: The Archives

Feast Afrique

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IN THIS LESSON

Unearthing the Taste and Legacy of West African Food & Drink Beyond the Archives

The Canada-based curator of Feast Afrique, Ozoz Sokoh describes the culinary project as a dedication to West African cuisine and cultural heritage. Sokoh’s belief that food is more than just eating is strongly evident in her curation of the Feast Afrique website— each category: Read, Watch, Listen, Eat, Explore, and Experience provides new interdisciplinary modes of learning about food history.

Read— According to Sokoh’s digital library, she unearthed a compilation of 240+ books and collections dated as far back as 1828 to the present. These reads are available via the Internet Archive, HathiTrust, The National Academies of Science, Engineering, Medicine, and more.

Watch— Sokoh has moreover selected videos of her keynote presentations, details surrounding the creation of her own Nigerian food exhibition, as well as recipe videos such as her notable comparison between Nigerian Akara & Brazilian Acarajé.

Listen— Selected audio clips about Sokoh’s exploration of Nigerian food history can be heard. One particular comparison within Travel by Plate that Sokoh made was the Akara and Acarajé, and how it symbolized a bridge between homes, especially as transatlantic slaves brought food beyond Nigerian borders to Brazil in the 18th century. Food history as identity is further orally expressed through poetry within Sokoh and Spoken Word Poet, Tolu Agbelusi’s More Than Food (listen below).

Eat— Written blog posts of recipes can be found in this section of Sokoh’s curated Feast Afrique. As Sokoh’s curation expands beyond archives, it is clear that her compilation of works includes primary sources that are personal and intended to be shared— unlike many traditional archives.

Explore— Under this section of Sokoh’s Feast Afrique, she embeds an interactive map that allows her readers to engage with the world’s boundaries of food. These visual maps show us the popularity of particular foods throughout the world. Expanding from West African cuisine, this page seems to invite various people to learn more about their culinary identities, situated within our world.

Experience— The final interaction that Sokoh intends for her viewers to engage in shows that the archive does not solely exist on the internet or through the past. Sokoh exhibits how she has collaborated with her own local community through various projects such as the Decade Project with Brittle Paper (2020) and literary dining experiences known as Eat The Book (2018).