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In this piece, Marta Moya, one of its founders, teaches us to see from the gut, draws us into a delicate choreography between art, food and everyday life, and shows us the potential of activating the collective through gastronomy: the true universal language.
Foundational narratives can also be written through gathering, connection, and shared life. Not everything began with a spear. Sometimes, the origin lies in a basket, an open bag, a gesture of care. That is what Ursula K. Le Guin imagined in her 1986 theory, The Carrier Bag.
And what would it mean to have that theory for dinner? What would it look like to design the menu, the lighting, the sound, or the wine pairing that could best embody this work?
At Fondo, we investigate artistic practices and translate them into the language of gastronomy. Dishes, wines, and everything around them become vehicles for ideas, meaning, and narrative. We not only see gastronomic practice as a valid artistic medium, but also believe deeply in its transformative power.
Our work is one of translation: we take the ideas of contemporary art and turn them into edible experiences. This research — which we understand as a form of radical curiosity — comes together with the collective exercise of imagination, and begins with the discourse of contemporary art.
Both gastronomy and art seek to provoke a bodily experience, a tangible reaction. They do not necessarily respond to logic or reason: they are forms of representation. Representations of stories, of truths and lies, of inheritances, of entire peoples or individual homes. They help us understand the history of one artist, or the theory of a particular writer.
They invite us to reflect on why in Spain we have gazpacho, whose main ingredient was first brought from the American continent, then considered poisonous, now a source of national pride, and more recently a viral Loewe image. A product as everyday as the tomato — something that might easily go unnoticed — is entangled in a web of cultural adaptations, scientific advances, changes in landscape and social structures. It also speaks to us of colonialism and politics, of memes and economics…
A tomato tells us about our past history, about our relationship with others, with the world, and with the planet. And, if we look closely enough, it may also offer clues about the future.
For us, art and gastronomy are bound together by many threads, but above all by their capacity to activate what is collective, what is shared. We all live inside a body. The simple fact of perceiving it connects us all, anchoring us to our human, animal, material reality.
In this context, to investigate is to ask questions from a place of curiosity and sensitivity. It is the impulse that moves artists, cooks, designers, and creators of all kinds.
When we engage with art — whether through a text, in a gallery, or in any other format — we open up spaces for empathy and understanding. We believe those spaces are best accessed through the stomach. We feel that food is a language shared by everyone, a kind of Esperanto.
We train ourselves to see through other eyes, through other guts. And that, we believe, has transformative power.
Mejor is an editorial space dedicated to gaining perspective, embracing new points of view, and collectively cultivating different ways of understanding wellbeing.
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