Democratic Food

Eröffnung

Since September 2025, the artist Ute Ritschel has been developing ‘Democratic Food’, an artistic research project exploring regional food cultures, found food, and the question of how food can be understood as a communal good. The focus is on food that is accessible, familiar or improvised – food as an everyday, democratic act of appropriation.

To date, 24 photo series have been created among other places at four locations of the Global Nomadic Art Project (GNAP): the Messel Pit, Kranichstein Hunting Lodge, the banks of the Rhine near Gernsheim and the Oberfeld estate.

At each of these locations, the artist collected materials and found objects, from which she created temporary arrangements, meal sequences and pictorial snacks. Herbs, apples, plums, nuts, chestnuts and soya beans feature alongside tomatoes and sunflowers from compost heaps or chance ‘street food’ finds along country roads.

The photographs oscillate between documentation, Eat Art and poetic field research. Edible and non-edible objects enter into an aesthetic dialogue, telling stories of landscape, resources, memory and survival. Each location becomes a space for experimentation – every day holds a new discovery.

The project views food not merely as sustenance, but as a cultural practice, a social connection and artistic material.

Opening hours:

Every day from 17:00, except Wednesdays and Thursdays