So whatâ€™s an eating designer?

Marije Vogelzang's an eating designer. "Not a food designer," she clarifies, because while a food designer is someone who works with food as a subject, Vogelzang designs from the verb, 'to eat'.

"I think that food is already designed by nature. I am interested in everything around food and especially the value of food, the emotional value, the rituals around it and the history and stories about food, where it comes from, how it's being prepared and transported, what happens in your body when you eat it," the Dutch artiste, who flew down to India recently for a hush-hush project involving an Indian hotel, elaborates.

Lost? So are we, until she whips out her laptop and walks us through her job, her life and her designs:

The white funeral
"My first project was a funeral dinner. Because in Holland, our funeral colour is black and I know your colour is white. And I think white is nicer, because it's much lighter and brighter. Also, I noticed that in many cultures around funerals, you have lots of food as a part of it and in Holland, we don't really have that. We only have a cup of coffee and a slice of sponge cake and that's it. So, I made a dinner only of white food. It was just completely white. I designed the food, but I also designed the crockery and everything around it. These flavours were combined very well together. Because they are very subtle and also, very bitter," she explains.

Marije says she started out wanting to be a product designer. "When I was still a student, that was in 1999, I was trying to find my design material. I went to all the workshops and I couldn't find any material. Because wood really doesn't work for me, and ceramics... I have to be too patient to make all these moulds and stuff. At the end of the day, I would go home and make dinner. And then I saw all my kitchen tools and I thought these are all my workshop tools," she says.

Elements
"I used to have two restaurants, and so when I opened the first one I said I am going to invite all my friends, and when they entered I asked them their birthday. When you know someone's date of birth, you also know there zodiac sign. When you know their zodiac sign, you also know their elements. In astrology, you have water, fire, earth and air, but I didn't tell them that I was going to place them in these sections. The earth people got all kinds of earth food — with earth flavours and things that grow under the ground like mushrooms. The fire people would eat spicy things, the water people had seafood and other watery things and so on. I don't really believe in astrology but it is interesting to make people think about what they are eating and why they're eating that," she says.

Veggie bling bling
The one aspect, she admits, where being an eating designer comes handy is while feeding her daughter. "When my daughter was three years old, she wouldn't eat any vegetables. And then I read that you have to eat something seven times before you accept a new flavour. It's just like learning a new language. You just have to repeat and repeat and repeat. Also, when you put kids on a dining table, you know, they don't have much to say about their lives, they can decide to not open their mouths when there's food and realise they have a lot of power when they do that so, if your mummy comes and then you close your mouth, then your mummy will behave really funny, so it is kind of a power. So, I thought I have to take them out of this situation of the dining table and I have to make sure that she tastes things several times. I invited her and her friends from the daycare for a workshop in my studio and I had a table full of vegetables and I told that we were going to do a jewellery-making workshop. The only way they could win the contest was if they used their teeth as a tool. So, they would get some tools to make jewellery but they really needed to use their teeth. So, they were nibbling away and I actually saw a boy, he was making a bracelet, and he was chewing, he thought, where's the bracelet gone? He'd actually eaten it. It's a way of taking them out of this continuous cycles of, 'no, I don't want to eat', 'yes, you have to eat'. And so, my daughter's actually eating vegetables now."

Eat, love, budapest
"In Budapest, gypsies are like the lowest caste in India. Nobody wants to interact with them, they're being discriminated against. Food is a very strong tool you can use to create a bond with people," she says about this particular project, which involved people being fed by gypsies. "To create understanding, to use food is one thing, but then to be fed by someone is another. And I think, that's why it's only women (in the project) because it is the mothers who feed their children. It is this kind of essence of life. I think it is very intimate. A mother feeds the child with food, but also with love. I thought about making this installation where people are getting physically fed with food but also with stories. It is kind of a strange environment and then you sit there and she feeds you her memories of food and she will include you in her life in that way. There's a saying that if you break bread with each other, then you can't break their neck."

Sharing dinner
"Many times people asked me to do Christmas dinners, but I never wanted to do it because in Europe, Christmas is already so full of designs and decorations. Christmas is really about being together and sharing food together and that's really it. Normally, you have a table and a tablecloth hangs down to the floor, but I just took it up into the air, so then you get a new space and it has slits in it so everybody sits in like that. Your head and your hands in the tablecloth (see left above). These were people who didn't really know each other, and they're physically connected, because if I pull here, you can feel it there. If you put people in strange situations, they start to bond and also, if you can only see your heads and not your clothes because your clothes reveal much of your identity and who you want to be, so, it kind of makes everybody equal and connects them in a way. Also, while one person would get a huge piece of rib, the second person would get a whole pumpkin stuffed with seeds and nuts and the third person would get a lettuce. People would start to cut everything up and start to share. So, it's really about a kind of bonding procedure," she says.

I love the Indian chaiwallahs
"This is my fourth time in India. I wanted to come to India many years before I actually came here. It was really on top of my list because I thought I would find a lot of inspiration here. There are many things that I admire about Indian food culture. I think here people have immense respect for rituals and the diverse food culture is much more valued. The awareness about food among people is commendable. I think in the western society, we lack that. We are quite poor when it comes to, you know we might be rich, culture, ritual... giving meaning to things. I really love street food and I like doing things like going to the chaiwallah where the making of tea is no less than a performance. And I feel that it also relates to my work in a sense, that they are already doing that," she says.