“Table Memory” is a participatory art project by the artist Marta Botas that takes the culinary culture of each locality as its starting point. Through live painting, the artist invites local residents and visitors to share memories, recipes, ingredients and knowledge linked to cooking and everyday life.
The project takes place on a large canvas spread out on a communal table, where a collective composition gradually emerges, inspired by the food, utensils and stories specific to each town. The square thus becomes an open workshop in which painting, conversation and memory are built collaboratively.
Rather than merely representing a place’s identity, ‘Mesa de memoria’ brings it to life. Each intervention incorporates contributions from the community, transforming everyday gestures and culinary tradition into a contemporary work created by many hands.
The result is a collective and ephemeral pictorial piece that leaves a dual imprint: the shared experience in the public space and a visual archive of the gastronomic memories that make up the ‘Arte en las Plazas de Asturias’ programme.
This performance can be enjoyed on 25, 26 and 27 September in the various towns as part of the ‘Arte en las Plazas’ programme:
- CANDÁS – Friday 25 September, from 7.00 pm to 8.30 pm
- PRAVIA – Saturday 26 September, from 12.30 pm to 2.00 pm
- CANGAS DE ONÍS – Sunday 27 September, from 12.30 pm to 2.00 pm
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Marta Botas (Gijón, 1976) is an artist, illustrator and creative director whose practice centres on the exploration of territory, material culture and the imaginaries associated with everyday life. Her work explores the relationships between landscape, memory and ways of life, paying particular attention to social and productive contexts and everyday practices as spaces from which to interpret cultural and territorial processes.
She works through painting, drawing, illustration and archiving, whilst also incorporating tools typical of graphic design into projects that take the form of installations, bodies of pictorial work, publishing projects and collaborations with other cultural actors. Trained at the IED Istituto Europeo di Design in Madrid, she runs Estudio Marta Botas, from where she undertakes creative direction, design and illustration projects alongside her artistic practice.
Throughout her career, she has collaborated with institutions and organisations such as the Friends of the Prado Museum Foundation, the Juan March Foundation, La Casa Encendida, the Teatro Real, the Thyssen-Bornemisza National Museum, AECID and El País Gastro. Her work also extends into the field of education, having developed workshops and programmes at cultural centres in Spain and Latin America, as well as at institutions such as CentroCentro, the Thyssen-Bornemisza National Museum and IED Madrid.
