After studying art for more than a decade, I argue that the best opportunity to appeal to a person’s 5 sensory organs in the most intense way possible is by a culinary experience. Cooking is and always were a huge passion of mine.

THE SHIP is performative food art project. The performance offers Anatolian fine-dining experience for the guests. The guest is being lead to the space that is set up similarly to a restaurant by the artist herself.

The chef-artist creates an Anatolian Cuisine inspired fine-dining menu from a wide variety of already ready meals. Ancient, mostly domestic and traditional recipes were improved to fresh recipes with modernized cooking and serving techniques.

This project is the blueprint for the restaurant to be established in the future with the same name.

There are two different experiences has designed for the project. In the photos you can see the second version which has been designed for the graduation exam of my studies at Willem de Kooning Academy, Rotterdam.

A fine dining restaurant environment is set up in one of the meeting rooms of the WDKA.
The three examiners sit alone, each of them at their own table, but together in the space, facing in same direction, looking at life-size fishing boat sculpture made by contemporary artist Paul Cox.

While being served and dining, though a pair of speakers the examiners listen to a story written and told by Florimond Wassenaar, a creative copywriter and collaborator. The story is based on a personal meeting, a conversation the storyteller and the artist had. They were strangers to each other, therefore they had a similar process of meeting each other as the stranger guests have with the artist-chef during the dining sessions.

The storyteller tells how did the he grew to know the artist throughout the conversation. It includes almost intimate details about the artist as a person.
This solution was invented to substitute the artist herself sitting face to face with the examiners.

A Four course menu was designed. Each traditional recipe were rethought to fit the fine dining style.

As an example of one of the dishes in the 4 course menu: Aşure(Noah's Puding)

According to the traditional recipe all ingredients; wheat, rice, bean, red lentil, bulgur, chickpea, dried blackcurrant, dried fig, dried apricot, pine nut is being cooked in pot with huge amount of sugar. It is served in bowls topped with ground cinnamon, hazelnut, walnut and fresh pomegranate seeds.

The serving emphasizes the importance, shows respect to all the individual ingredients. Once the dish is cooked and ready, the ingredients were separated and aligned around the wheat porridge in a composition.

Coaching (SLC): Lizan Freijsen

Tutoring: Rolf Engelen, Margo J. Ludoph

Research Teacher: Levien Nordeman

External Partner: Janwillem van der Veen

Photo Credits: Mano Daniel Szollosi

Special thanks to Florimond Wassenaar and Paul Cox