Joya: AiR / Yeni Ma / KOR
photo Simón Beckmann
Joya: AiR / Yeni Ma / KOR
“I spent my early years in a mountain village, where daily life was deeply intertwined with the rhythms of nature. Each season offered distinct sensory experiences — foraging for wild greens in spring, inhaling the scent of blooming acacia, or hearing the chirping of crickets at night. Over time, as I settled into urban life, those embodied connections to the natural world gradually faded from my daily life.
Amid this quiet sense of disconnection, my time at Joya: AiR became a turning point. The residency offered a rare chance to reconnect — through hands-on observation, sensory attention, and genuine curiosity. It reminded me how meaningful it is to engage with the environment not only intellectually, but physically and intuitively.
At the same time, I was able to further develop Communal Kitchen, an ongoing project series I curate. This project centers around everyday acts related to food — cultivating, naming, cooking, and eating — as a lens through which to reflect on ancestral knowledge, forgotten histories, collapsing ecosystems, and the possibilities of communal life.
During my stay, I walked the surrounding hills daily, sketching wild plants, noting their names, and researching their properties — whether edible, medicinal, or toxic. I sometimes tasted them myself, and shared them with fellow residents. These simple acts — seeing, touching, tasting, naming — helped me think more deeply about embodied knowledge. They also gave deeper grounding to my work, which is rooted in the gestures we make with food and ingredients.
Joya: AiR provided a space where thought didn’t need to be rushed. A place where plants could be encountered not as specimens to be classified, but as beings to be in dialogue with. And where the kitchen could be imagined not simply as a site of preparation, but as a space for gathering, exchange, and unlearning”.
Yeni Ma