Andrea Sisó

I am a person who creates spaces and opens up cultural dialogue around food; I enjoy the possibilities for connection this generates.

With roots in Miami, Spain and Colombia I am currently based in London, where I have made it my practice to explore ways of communicating Latinx heritage. During my MA in Visual Communication at the Royal College of Art I’ve been running the RCA’s gastronomic society Panza. It is an experimental culinary place created to explore the boundaries of community, art, critical theory, and food.

Before the RCA, I worked professionally designing packaging, art direction, and building visual identities, with a particular interest in the aforementioned applied within the food industry. Prior to this, I graduated from Central Saint Martins with a BA (Hons) in Fashion Design, and worked in the fashion industry in New York and London.

Recent Collaborations

Art Direction and designer for Panza; RCA's Gastronomic (food) society with collaborator Livia Carpineto.

Co-designer for Fugitive Voices lecture series by Eleni Ikoniadou with support from Movement Radio. Design team: Scott Jones, Saba Mundlay, Rafa Zugliani, Anya Landolt, Shannan Hu, Junyi Yan.

Graphic designer and exhibiting in Transformative Futures: Youth Takeover 2022 at Camden Art Centre.

Contributor to Broudou Magazine.

My current work explores the infinite potential of food as a metaphor to address wider socio-political contexts. What we eat and the history of how we have come to eat is a central theme within my current practice. I find myself situated at the discursive intersection around hybridity in cultural identity, food history, collaboration, generosity and care.

During the last two years I have delved into the practical and metaphorical dimensions of the meal as a performative space within which to gather, as a method of discussing established social constructs, such as colonialism and its legacy in the modern day. Sharing food with people is a way for me to communicate, bridging cultural gaps; a way to teach/learn with others about generosity and conviviality.

I am always looking for new collaborations with writers, designers, chefs, film-makers, historians, artists and others, so please do not hesitate to get in touch~.

Blueberry Tart with Foraged Elderflower – a depiction of a Panza motif (the collection of spoons, the most ancient utensil) with a photograph depicting generosity.

A Description of Panza – Panza bookmarks and a short description of the kind of places/spaces the collective creates.

Gathering and archiving

The word Panza means belly in colloquial Spanish. I chose this title because I genuinely believe in the power of cultural narratives woven out of the foods we enjoy. It is also a nod to Ursula K. Le Guin’s idea of the belly as a carrier for narrative which resides in her 'Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction' essay.

Panza is a social food project. Its aim is to decolonize the way we share knowledge and rethinking how we value sources of knowledge. It has manifested as a set of pedagogical spaces: workshops, cooking classes and meals. I use communal activities like cooking or sharing a meal as a way to stimulate dialogue.

To pair with the workshops and disseminate my body of work I have created a series of publications. The objective is to create a set of ‘workshop cookbooks’. They are produced as templates so people can facilitate their own workshops, in their own communities, using their own contexts to enrich the discourse on these subjects. In doing so, I hope to contribute to the decolonization of knowledge exchange by creating a tool that facilitates this.

Huaco de Maíz poster installed at the RCA

Huaco De Maíz: Workshop and Publication, media item 2

Huaco de Maíz publication title page

Huaco de Maíz publication, An Essay about Relics & Museums

Workshop participant's dog-shaped relic

In this cooking class I used maize dough to talk about the use of relics in constructing national identity. I invited the participants to listen to the history of Huacos (Andean religious relics) and their looting in Colombia, while we made a sculptural version of maize dough fritters.

During the workshop, we discussed the role of the museum in relation to the relic and national identity.

In countries that gained independence from colonial powers it has become common to find indigenous artefacts as the basis of the post-colonial national identity. Understanding their importance as signifiers of post-coloniality in the workshop, questions of what could be a conscientious way to educate in decolonized museums arose.

Sculptural Butter Poster

Screenshots of Participants Work

Spread from Sculptural Butter Publication – A spread from the Sculptural Butter publication describing the history of the Holestein Fresian and its implication in colonialist intensive farming practices.

This work draws on butter as a sculptural material to re-think perception of its consumption and the colonial origin of intensive farming practices.

I introduced participants to sculpting with butter, while they were making their sculptures; I read aloud passages about the history of butter, butter sculpting and the Holstein-Fresian breed of cow (the most common dairy cow in modern day).

I used the Holstein breed as a case study on the history of intensive, unsustainable farming practices. I wanted people’s minds to see the inherent link between capitalist modern farming and colonialism, as the two evolved dependent on one another. This legacy is most noticeable in aspects of food culture which were once filled with notions of locality but are now homogenized and processed like butter.

Fugitive Voices Lecture with Rosemary Grennan from MayDay Rooms – inverted collage created from archival material from the digitized archive.

I collaborated with fellow students to create the socials which were used for the Fugitive Voices lecture series. An RCA lecture series which invites artists to speak on their practice relating to the idea of fugitivity.

For Rosemary Grennan who represented the Mayday Rooms, I created a subverted archival collage out of the educational protest material found on their digitized archive leftove.rs.

The Mayday Rooms is an archive, resource and safe haven for social movements, experimental and marginal cultures and their histories. They hosted my Huaco de Maiz workshop. As a space which a history of functioning as an alternative to the conventional archiving institution, it was the ideal place in which to question relics and their relationship to national identity.