Everlasting Soup is co-curated, co-hosted, and co-cooked by Farbod Fakharzadeh and Katie Lenanton, with artist collaborators Alejandra Alarcón, Bebetton (Eeva Rönkä & Jani A Purhonen), Michaela Casková, and Gladys Camilo.

Feasting and togetherness have long been important within the cultural field. For centuries, the core elements of the salon—hospitality, artworks, and (intellectual) discourse—have been remixed and enacted according to the needs of changing public spheres, and those who inhabit them. For this project, we nod to these histories, as well as the celebrated artist-run restaurants of the ‘60s and ‘70s, which partly inspired the relational aesthetic practices of the ‘90s and beyond.

We also consider some local histories—in 1936, Sinne’s gallery space was a “third class” workers’ canteen, managed by the co-operative Elanto. Unlike other fancier and more comfortable “second class” canteens, it aimed to serve humble fare to tightly-packed customers who might have financial limitations, but needed a quick meal amongst colleagues and kin.

While Everlasting Soup honours aspects of these legacies, we also wish to challenge, subvert, and ferment them into something unexpected, shifting the focus from the salon to the kitchen. A space historically unseen by guests, kitchens are often occupied by bodies and subjectivities not usually welcomed in realms in which power congregates. But the kitchen is—and always has been—a space for critical discourse, connections, bonding, gossip, important conversations, conspiring, laughter, play, creation, and collective dreaming.

Through sharing kitchen talk and kitchen traditions, Everlasting Soup aims to create a welcoming environment for precarious cultural workers and others to discuss their livelihoods and working conditions. We work through and with the metaphor of a pot of everlasting soup, in which the remnants of one day’s broth become tomorrow’s beginnings. We put forward a collective curatorial practice that strives to foster long-term processual relationships. Alongside this, edible artworks develop, accumulate, and are consumed during public tastings. The space’s interior cauldron simmers with research threads connected to drink-making, broth-tending, cake-baking, and transforming scraps. Thoughts, objects, and people marinate together. Instead of an opening, a finissage celebration presents six weeks of research, conversations, and residues.

At the same time, we recognise that the time-bound nature of an exhibition shapes how sustainable (and intense) our speculative experiment can be. In the face of challenging and systemic conditions, how to keep doing hope while not bubbling over—and respecting the time scales, capacities, and realms we have the privilege to inhabit? We commit to learning through doing, and revel in the Finnish translation of the exhibition title—ikuinen soppa. May we all have the possibility and resources to stay with the trouble, and wallow sometimes in the forever-mess.

So please join us in thinking about soupiness, sustenance, socialness, and service. Consider who is (and has been) present at the (dinner party) table, and taste how residue, accumulation, and spicing the broth can operate within an exhibition context. You’re welcome to sign up for a conversational soup lunch or a tasting. Come hang out, throw shade, talk shit, and spill piping hot tea! Let’s collectively develop strategies for navigating the tides of the multifaceted struggles we face today.

Curators Farbod Fakharzadeh and Katie Lenanton

Free public program

More info and registration via the links. The events are held in English.

Join Farbod, Katie, and special guests for conversational Soup Lunches
every Wed–Fri from 22.1–28.2, at 12–14. Program duration is 2 hours.
Registration required. There are seats still left. Sign up here

You’re invited to join co-curators and co-cooks Farbod Fakharzadeh and Katie Lenanton for a free conversational soup lunch. Come for some kitchen talk—let’s think about soupiness, sustenance, socialness, and service, and consider who is (and has been) present at the table.

Guests will be served a tasty vegan “everlasting” soup, as well as some special drinks and snacks. We’ll hang out, chat, and gossip, and there’ll also be moments of structured conversation facilitated by and with artworks—some of which are edible. 

You can participate in ways that are comfortable, but we hope you’re interested in chatting, questioning as a strategy, and practices of collective dreaming and note-taking. Let’s share experiences, feelings, and tactics for how to navigate work and life within the cultural field. 

This is a beginning—we’re open to continuing the conversation, and sharing our learnings (and how this research develops) with participants going forward. Welcome!

Make inks from soup scraps with Michaela Casková
Saturday 1.2, at 12–14
The event is fully booked. Register for waiting list. Sign up here

During this special Saturday soup lunch, artist and art educator Michaela Casková will cook a broth, while sharing zero waste techniques for transforming vegetable scraps into handmade inks. We’ll provide paper and brushes for testing and play, and you can bring along a little jar to take some ink home.

Guests will be served a bowl of tasty vegan “everlasting” soup, as well as some special drinks and snacks. Similar to the Everlasting Soup lunches, we’ll casually hang out, chat, and gossip. There’ll also be moments of structured conversation facilitated by and with artworks—some of which are edible. So come join us for some kitchen talk, and let’s think about how soupiness, sustenance, socialness, and service can inform ecological approaches to art-making.

Sample brews and broths with Bebetton
Sunday 2.2, at 14–16
No registration needed.

Escape the snow and sip a tipple during a Sunday session with kotiviini collective Bebetton. Artists Jani A Purhonen and Eeva Rönkä will warm and spice a hearty wine broth inspired by classic pea soup ingredients. Guests can also mix their own broth, and sample wines that have been brewing in the exhibition space. Seasonings include carrot, peas, and marjoram with mustard seeds. 

The broths will continue to ferment throughout the exhibition. Visitors also have the opportunity to acquire their own takeaway broth when it transforms into an edition of artworks in the final week of the exhibition. Be sure to stop by Sinne during opening hours from 25 February-2 March, or join the finissage party from 16-19 on Saturday 1 March.

Conversation With The Anti-fascist Hat
Sunday 16.2, at 14–16
No registration needed.

Join Agnė Bagdžiūnaitė’s performative talk and sample edible treats as she takes over the Everlasting Soup canteen.

Agnė is an artist, curator, and researcher whose work focuses on methodologies rooted in people’s histories, feminist and queer ethnographies, and theory. She has extensively studied labor histories, particularly highlighting women’s work stories from the Soviet era and 1990s Lithuania. Agnė’s research explores the intersections of gender, labour, and memory within the post-Soviet space, addressing the complex dynamics arising from historical changes.

During her performative talk on Sunday, she will engage in an imaginary dialogue with the director of a canteen in Lithuania, who has preserved it as a monument to the industrial past—a place that serves as a reminder of the occupation and the people who had to live through it.

The presentation is supported by the Lithuanian Council for Culture.

A Long Cake Afternoon Service by Alejandra Alarcón
Saturday 22.2, at 14–17
No registration needed.

Come sample a very long cake full of surprises: cut your slice, taste, and try to make sense of the flavours. Are you tasting something citrusy, herbal, tangy, sweet, fruity, bitter, or salty? 

No need to register—all are welcome! Bring friends, family, and a container if you’d like to take some cake home!

Artist Alejandra Alarcón will decorate the cake in situ from midday, before inviting visitors to participate in the afternoon service from 14-17. 

Each slice of this edible sculpture contains a unique collage of unexpected tastes, textures, and colours. Its ingredients reflect a mishmash of memories and places. Some ingredients have been repurposed as natural dyes, while messy icings, seasonal produce, and preserved foods blend into edible ornaments. 

The cake includes gluten, lactose, egg, sesame seeds, and soy. A full list of ingredients is available on site—please check in with us if you’re concerned about food allergies.

Book a Bar Tender session with Katie Lenanton
Wednesdays 5.2, 12.2, 19.2, 26.2, at 15:30–16:30
The sessions are fully booked. Register for waiting list. Sign up here

You are invited to register for a 1-on-1 Bar Tender session to share time, drinks, and conversation with curator Katie Lenanton. This mobile pop-up art bar draws parallels between the labour and social dynamics of a curator and a bartender. 

Maybe you’d like to vent, ponder, bounce ideas, or share secrets? Let’s discuss what’s bubbling inside—from itchy thoughts, to half-formulated artworks. We can figure out how to spend time together, so that listening and collective reflection can combine with judgement-free service. 

This version of Bar Tender is developed in collaboration with artist Michaela Casková, whose naturally-dyed textiles demarcate the space. 

Guests will be served conceptual cocktails from foraged ingredients, and non-alcoholic options are available. 

The plan is to sit around a table on soft cushions on the floor, but please share accessibility (and other) needs when you sign up, and we will do our best to accommodate them.

 

 

Finissage final feast
Saturday 1.3, at 16–21
No registration needed.

Welcome to Sinne from 16 to 21 this Saturday 1 March for a finissage party to celebrate Everlasting Soup coming to a close for now.

There wasn’t an opening, so this is the moment to join the curators and artists for drinks, hangs, artwork tastings, and music by Midnight Mangonada and DJ Arvid.

All visitors to the exhibition also have the opportunity to acquire 1 of the 162 bottles that comprise Bebetton’s artwork, The Act of Drinking Pea Soup With Friends is the Highest Form of Art. The sliding scale suggested donation is 5–25 €.

Since December, pea, carrot, and marjoram wines have been fermenting in Sinne. They have now been distributed amongst bottles that each bear a fragment from Bebetton’s trilingual wine poem. Visitors to the exhibition would have heard the poem amplified in the space, as part of the Jats sound piece in two movements.

With the help of a UV light, you’ll also find an invisible ink surprise on each label—snippets from some of the collective dreams that have arisen during the conversational soup lunches of the past 6 weeks.

We hope you’re excited to join us on Saturday, and try this classic dish in a whole new way—let’s raise a glass of Pea Soup wine, and keep dreaming together!

Follow @everlastingsoup on Instagram for updates and surprises.

About the curators and artists

Farbod Fakharzadeh (he/him) is an artist and curator whose work deals with memory, history, and politics, particularly in relation to notions of hospitality, collective construction, regenerative agency, and political imaginaries. His recent micro exhibition project, Inside/Outside, navigates the borders of public/private, history/memory and personal/political.

Katie Lenanton (she/her) is an intersectional feminist curator, artistic researcher, writer, and editor who works collectively through mediums like exhibition-making, social practice, wildcrafting, conceptual cocktails, publishing, scent, and sustenance, amongst others.

Her project Bar Tender is both a mobile pop-up art bar, and a long-term relational artistic and curatorial project. It draws parallels between the labour and social dynamics of a curator and a bartender—both listen patiently to the ideas, challenges, and hopes of artist-patrons.

Alejandra Alarcón (she/her) is a Mexican interdisciplinary artist working at the intersection of food and art. Grounded by a decolonial and ecofeminist approach to knowledge production, her interest in (food) sustainability—the seasonality of things, non-human collaborations—is deeply intertwined with embodied practices such as walking, foraging, cooking, and digesting.

Bebetton makes country wine and navigates a rugged picnic in the waters of art. It’s an art initiative formed by Eeva Rönkä (she/her) and Jani Anders Purhonen (he/him) with the intention of mixing disparate elements in meaningful ways. Bebetton’s foci lays in gift economies and the production of wine in an extended sense. Rönkä and Purhonen are also members of food art collective Koekeittiö.

Michaela Casková (she/her) is an artist, art educator, nomadic gardener and forager who keeps an eye on atmospheric events. Walking, observing, asking, being in silence, listening, imagining, picking, foraging, mapping, and drawing are some of her tools, and she’s motivated by processes of connecting, sharing, doing, being, and learning together.

Gladys Camilo (she/her) is an interdisciplinary artist whose practice centres on sustainability and the natural world. Camilo’s work investigates how care—both as a labour and a material—shapes personal and collective identities. Her recent textile sculptures examine the concept of mothering as an epicentre of creativity, trauma, and healing.