After producing films, the Belgian Alexandra Swenden embarked on the creation of culinary events uniting an artist and a chef. To make the public aware of the act of eating, which affects both the body as to the heart and the pleasure.
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“Flemish asparagus is a dish that connects my territory to its history, a very particular vegetable (which we deprive of light so that it reaches its taste), full of simplicity Culinary and a peasant common sense, which is good inside. I have always been passionate about everything related to the body. By reflecting, I realized that it was going back to my early childhood.
At 2 and a half, because I was very asthmatic, my mother went to see a doctor who advised him not to give me lactose and other fat, and she took this very seriously. However, the small village where I grew up, not far from Ghent, in Flanders, is also the cradle of the company of Lima organic products. At the time, it was a small factory in the middle of the woods. Opposite, a slightly bohemian community made and sold bread, vegetables and factory products.
On weekends, with the family, we went there on foot buying plant milks and craft breads. This is how my mother started to make us eat organic with this idea of paying attention to what we ingest. Obviously, my three brothers and sisters and I hated that. My mother was accused of vegetable harassment. Despite everything, the awareness of a good diet was there, the seed was planted. And at the age of 10, my health problems were resolved, without other medicines than a good diet and physiotherapy.
During my adolescence crisis, I sent everything to waltz and went to study in Brussels. I started to love restaurants. Student, I obviously did not have much money, so I was not going in expensive addresses, but I liked the atmosphere. It’s not just a question of cooking. What interests me are the flows that connect the human, the place and the plate. I studied in a business school but I wanted to do cinema.
As soon as I had my diploma, I settled in Paris and worked for ten years in a film production company. After a one -year break to retype a house in Burgundy, I met the culinary critic Andrea Petrini. He wanted to create unique, extraordinary events, with a collective of creative leaders and I wanted to set up independent and committed projects. We teamed up and we organized a dozen together. It was incredible experiences, but everything was going so fast …
Today, giving time to a project has become essential for me, just like working in depth, developing roots, anchoring me in the earth, thinking about the body. The more I think about it, the more I find it crazy that we can eat things lightly. It is all the more terrible that what we ingest constitutes us.
My new project, “The work to the body”, connects duets of artists and chefs, over a long time. For the past year, each pair has been thinking about transcribing the work of the other through their art. There will be dinners, exhibitions, restitutions, which are also stories. Like Flemish asparagus, like each dish that touches me, straight to the body. “