The 96^th ARTCaffè hosted Maya Minder.

An artist working with food as material through installations, performances, and video, her practice explores the intersection of biology, ecology, and culture, often engaging with microbes, fermentation, seaweed, and alternative food systems. She is inspired by scientific research and feminist perspectives, questioning human control over nature and imagining future scenarios of sustainable living. Her works reflect on the agency of microbes, food rituals, and the invisible forces shaping life. Through performances and workshops, she invites the public to engage with ecological issues, taste, and transformation—bringing science,intimacy, and playfulness into the art space to rethink how we live and eat.

Maya Minder: When I speak about food—or what some call “eat art”—one historical reference is Daniel Spoerri, the Swiss artist known for his work in the 1960s. He was a pioneer in using food as both medium and message, revealing how deeply it connects to culture, memory, and society.

I often say that while formal lectures can be informative, the most intimate and revealing conversations often happen around the dinner table. That’s where secrets are shared, and subjective, embodied perspectives come to light.

For me, food is also a feminist concern. As a woman, I see food as a powerful entry point in feminist art—a site of labor, care, control, and resistance.
In today’s world, food carries urgent political weight. We are living through scarcity, climate crisis, and environmental upheaval. The global food system is under immense pressure, and how we choose to grow, share, and eat food is a critical question for our collective future.

I originally began with the art of fermentation. I have a Korean background, and growing up, my mother always gave me kimchi. It was just part of daily life. I didn’t think much of it back then—kimchi was something that left a strong smell, gave you bad breath, and made you feel like you had to brush your teeth right away. At school, people would ask, “Did you eat garlic?” There were also seaweed soups, and many other uniquely aromatic foods I initially took for granted or even dismissed. But as my art practice evolved, I started to rediscover and appreciate them.

My first major installation was called Ghost House: Fermentation and Bacteria. I created a table setting and placed a spotlight on the fermented drinks and kimchi, positioning them at the center of the table. The goal was to shift attention away from the performer—myself—and onto the agency of microbial life.

Today,we know that fermented foods are incredibly beneficial. They’re probiotic, they support our immune system, and they even play a role in emotional and mental well-being by affecting our gut-brain connection.

Through culinary exploration, I’ve been diving deep into fermentation practices and experimenting with recipes from around the world.

I’ve also been reading a lot of scientific articles on the topic of the microbiome. Research into the microbiome has really only taken off in the last 20 years or so. Before that, it was vastly underestimated—partly because the gut is seen as a more uncanny, less glamorous organ. It's home to parasites, it's associated with waste, and in many ways, it’s been culturally sidelined. From the perspective of Western medicine, it was always more attractive to study the brain and nervous system than the gut.

But in fact, the gut is just as important as the brain. As an organ, it’s incredibly vast—its surface area has been compared to the size of two tennis courts. Just as our skin protects us from the outside environment, the gut plays a similar protective role—but from the inside, through the intake of food.

I’ve noticed how differently food is perceived invarious cultures. In many Asian traditions, food is seen not just as nourishment, but as medicine, as a form of healing and disease prevention. When we eat, we’re not just feeding ourselves—we’re engaging in communication with the environment, with nature, and with agricultural systems.

I’ve always found it fascinating to consider how humans shape landscapes by the way we eat. Cooking has always been at the heart of the home, the heart of family life. It’s an intimate, central practice that has historically brought people together. This is also a form of science, a knowledge that has been accumulated over hundreds of thousands of years. My artistic practice is deeply rooted in it. I try to translate systems thinking—from science, feminism, and politics—into an understanding of how food functions in our society, particularly in the context of capitalism.

One of the images I often use in my work is a handprint of a child after playing on a playground. The image captures the bacteria and microorganisms that the child collected through play. We’re always telling children to wash their hands after playing outside, and of course, hygiene is important—but for me, this image beautifully illustrates the diversity of invisible life all around us.

We often associate microorganisms with disease. We’ve been taught to fear them—especially in the context of food and cleanliness. But there’s another narrative: one that speaks of the vital role these microbes play in human coexistence with nature, agriculture, healthy soil, and even communication.

Western science, particularly following the work of Louis Pasteur, came to define germs primarily as dangerous. This theory shaped how we understand cleanliness and safety to this day. But I think today we sometimes misinterpret the agency of microbes. They are not only agents of disease; they are also fundamental to life. Microorganisms were the first living beings on Earth, dating back over 3 billion years. They played a key role in the evolution of life itself.

As an artist, I try to bring these themes into my work. Even the way we communicate—through a kiss, a handshake—can be seen as a microbial exchange, a deeper layer of connection that reminds us we’re part of a larger, invisible ecosystem.

I began by fermenting, especially drinks. I became particularly fascinated by kombucha because of the strange, slippery tea mushroom—often referred to as a SCOBY (Symbiotic Culture Of Bacteria and Yeast)—that grows on its surface. It’s uncanny, mysterious, and continuously reproduces. I found myself drawn to this more-than-human existence.

I often say that the SCOBY isn’t exactly “alive” in the conventional sense; I like to describe it as the "house" of the microbiome. Interestingly, scientists are also fascinated by this structure. It's not composed of a single species but rather a community of over 400 different microbial species collaborating to form this protective layer, or “mantle,” that shields them from the environment.

On the other side of the comparison, you see an image taken with an electron microscope—it's a depiction of Lactobacillus, the type of bacteria that plays a central role in producing cheese, sauerkraut, and kimchi. I juxtaposed these two images to highlight the contrast in perception: one is an artistic, intuitive engagement with living materials; the other, a high-tech scientific visualization. The tools that allow us to capture such detailed images of microorganisms have only existed for about 20–25 years. In contrast, the human practice of fermentation dates back much further.

Humans have been fermenting for at least 10,000 years. Early examples include wine-making in Georgia, beer in Europe, and makgeolli in Korea. In Europe, fermentation was often the domain of monks, who preserved and passed down this knowledge. Their understanding of fermentation may have bordered on the mystical or magical, but it was deeply practical. They developed methods to control this complex process, even without knowing the microbiological agents behind it.

Fermentation is not simple—it requires knowledge of things like anaerobic environments and temperature control. Yet people managed to refine these techniques long before science could explain what was happening on a microscopic level. In places like the Greek temples at Delphi, fermentation may have been perceived as sacred or magical. Similarly, in monastic traditions, this knowledge was often kept secret, treated with reverence.

Coming back to my practice, I love exploring how, throughout human history, we've related to nature—especially through food, by growing our own plants and vegetables. I teach many workshops and offer fermentation classes to a wide range of people. In a way, I see this as a form of reviving ancient knowledge—knowledge that we've largely lost due to the advent of refrigeration and the rise of supermarket culture.

In Korea, for example, there’s a noticeable decline in homemade kimchi. While our grandmothers used to make it themselves, it’s now often outsourced or bought ready-made. My mother, however, had to make it herself—she migrated to Switzerland, and there was no store where she could buy kimchi. She had to learn how to make it from scratch.

I grew up witnessing this process. When I began making kimchi myself, I failed many times. My mother would tell me, “You have to become kimchi to make good kimchi.” I found this deeply meaningful. When we think from the microbes'perspective, it makes sense: you cultivate, propagate, and live in harmony with them. They become your companions. 

My fermentation journey led me to collaborate with Michelin-starred chef Stefan Wiesner in Switzerland. He is known for his alchemical approach to cuisine—working with fire, fungi, lichens, distillation, and fermentation. He draws on historical European traditions of alchemy, similar to figures like Paracelsus, from the Enlightenment era.

As I mentioned earlier, I don’t produce many conventional artworks, but my practice is deeply rooted in knowledge-sharing—through workshops, performances, and talks. One of my collaborators is Pyeongso Yu, a Korean artist now based in Switzerland. He wrote his entire thesis on fermentation, and we connected deeply around the concept of what he calls “social fermentation.”

The idea is that when we ferment, it’s not just the microbes that are active—human relationships are also fermenting. We both believe it’s important to ferment in a good mood, in a positive atmosphere, and to have fun while doing it. This energy somehow enhances the final result.

We also see fermentation as a form of community-building. Historically, especially in Europe, people used fermentation to preserve food for the winter. It was alabor-intensive process, and the whole village would come together to help. It was a collective effort—preserving the harvest, ensuring access to food and nutrients during harsh winters, and sharing gossip and stories while working.

As you’ve probably gathered, I’m fascinated by alchemical practices. I love growing bacteria and experimenting—not necessarily from a formal scientific background, but more from grassroots, DIY science or DIY biology perspective. In one of my experiments, I grew bacteria on cooked soybeans. The pattern they formed was beautiful. It was a strain of calm yeast capable of producing a biofilm or bacterial “saliva,” similar to the SCOBY in kombucha. Just underneath that, you can see a brown surface—that’s kombucha leather, a vegan material I began to develop as an alternative to animal-based leather.

This work connects to broader conversations in design and future-making—how we can use fungi and bacteria to create new sustainable materials. It challenges us to move beyond the petroleum age. Everything around us—our plastics, colors, packaging, and cars—is rooted in fossil fuel-derived materials. While we’ve benefited immensely from petrochemical products, we now face the urgent task of imagining and experimenting with alternatives.

I became quite obsessive with the topic and began producing kombucha on a much larger scale. I built fermentation pools, each about two-by-two meters, as away to experiment with growing bacterial cellulose in more monumental formats. One of the resulting artworks consisted of a wooden frame where I stretched and exposed the kombucha “skin,” lighting it from behind. The whole setup evokes something both tactile and uncanny—almost like a kind of skin. The shape of the frame was inspired by espalier, a horticultural technique for training fruit trees to grow flat against walls in geometric patterns. It’s a method that increases fruit production by harnessing the warmth of the wall, but also involves strong aesthetic manipulation. I’m fascinated by this human impulse to control and shape nature—and I see my own work with bacterial cellulose as part of that tradition, though done with a different intention.

This body of work eventually evolved into a project titled Entitled to Skin,which addressed not only the aesthetics of biomaterials but also their limitations. One of the major challenges with bacterial cellulose is durability. Unlike plastic—which is one of the most lasting materials humans have ever created—biomaterials tend to degrade or dissolve when exposed to water or harsh environmental conditions. This impermanence is part of their beauty, but it’s also their fragility.

In one iteration, I exposed a kombucha skin on top of a metal sculpture to the elements—sunlight, rain, storms, and heat—intentionally subjecting it to stress. I wanted to test the limits of this material, to see how it would react when pushed to the edge. In a way, it was a deliberately brutal gesture, very human in nature—testing, threatening, and breaking.

As part of this process, I also recorded environmental data: temperature, humidity, and the presence of volatile compounds, since fermentation can produce strong smells. I’m currently working on turning this data into a soundpiece—a work still in progress.

One of the related performances took place at Kunsthalle Bern, where I explored the concept of single-celled life. The central symbol I used was the egg. Eggs are powerful metaphors—they are enclosed cells, containers of life. Humans, as members of the animal kingdom, are multicellular beings, but single-celled organisms like those in kombucha reproduce differently: they clone themselves, dividing without the need for fusion or intimacy, unlike our sexual reproduction that requires genetic combination.

In this piece, I hand-drew small faces onto each egg and invited participants to ferment them using salt, referencing ancient food preservation practices. I had three equally sized pools: one growing kombucha, one filled with eggs, and one with salt. The audience was asked to help pickle the eggs by embedding them into the salt. It was participatory and symbolic—connecting back to ideas of community, food culture, and life cycles.

Afterward, I was left with a large amount of egg white—about two kilograms—which I didn’t want to waste. I followed a recipe and transformed it into meringue, playing with forms and textures. It was an unexpectedly joyful process—turning leftover material into something new, light, and playful. The resulting meringue piece now hangs in my studio, though I’m not sure how long it will last. But in its own way, it’s a circular work—rooted in food-saving, transformation, and creative experimentation.

The third piece that came out of the performance was another kombucha work. I attempted to grow a new SCOBY in an open pond during the event, but due to the number of participants—bringing along their own skin bacteria, yeasts, and fungi—the fermentation went out of balance. Mold began to appear. A few dayslater, the museum called: “You have to come. Something’s not right.”

Initially, we hoped to salvage the skin. I offered solutions, but in the end, we decided to terminate the experiment. Sometimes, fermentation fails. It’s unpredictable, sensitive, and deeply alive—and that’s part of what makes it so compelling.

While I was at the museum, by chance I had my camera with me. I asked the technician to help clean up the failed kombucha piece. I asked him to gently layer one sheet of the kombucha over another, and submerge it in water to prevent further contamination. What happened, almost accidentally, turned into a beautiful and haunting video. The footage reminded me of placentas—fleshy, life-giving, and intimate. It evoked questions about the origins of life, and what it means to work with living materials. That’s the beauty of working with biological processes—bacteria, yeasts, and microbes have a kind of agency that feels both familiar and utterly unknowable. They’re uncanny in part because they’re invisible. Making them visible—through video, photography, or performance—is a practice I return to again and again. It’s a kind of playful witchcraft, and yes, it’s a lot of fun.

Another project I’m currently showing in an exhibition explores cyanobacteria and photosynthesis. Cyanobacteria are among the earliest life forms capable of converting sunlight into energy—they perform photosynthesis without relying on ingested nutrients. They represent a mode of existence that doesn’t need to eat, but simply absorbs light.

From that, I developed a speculative concept I call Homo photosyntheticus. I asked: What if humans could become photosynthetic? What if we could cross the boundary between the animal and plant kingdoms and take our energy from the sun? Maybe we would just lie in the sun all day, growing slowly. Perhaps agriculture would become obsolete, freeing the land for wild growth and pleasure gardens. It’s an imaginative, utopian question—but one that connects to very real ecological questions.

At the same time, I’ve been exploring seaweed, especially from a food perspective. In East Asia—particularly Korea, Japan, and China—there is a long, rich tradition of eating seaweed. Although kelp forests exist around the globe,these cultures preserved the culinary knowledge of seaweed. Again, it ties back to my interest in forgotten knowledge systems and food heritage.

I began a series of workshops—not to teach how to eat seaweed, but to ask people, particularly in Asia, to teach me. It reversed the usual flow of knowledge. Through this, I also started to experiment with adapting seaweed for Western palates—developing fusion recipes that explore cultural taste memory.

Tasteis deeply encoded in culture. All humans have the same five basic tastereceptors, but what we consider “delicious” is culturally shaped.

Beyond food, these workshops often expanded into broader environmental discussions. We explored algal blooms, water pollution, and climate change. We led participants to freshwater lakes and rivers, not just to observe seaweed but to connect directly with aquatic ecosystems. Through microscopes, pH tests, and guided talks, people began to understand the unseen life forms in these environments. My hope is that this embodied experience of science helps people internalize it—just like food. When we digest food, we come to know it on a cellular level. Understanding works the same way.

One of our research strands focused on algae in outer space. Spirulina, a type of blue-green algae, is already being sent into space in bioreactors. It serves as both a food source and a producer of oxygen—while recycling astronaut wastewater. It’s a perfect closed-loop system, essential for future Mars missions. Earth, in a sense, already does this at a planetary scale—we just haven’t learned to mimic it properly.

In Zurich, we collaborated with scientists developing algae bioponds as a sourceof biofuel. The microalgae they grow contain up to 80% oil in their bodies.These vibrant green organisms are not just beautiful—they’re packed with energy. Algae could realistically replace mineral oils, making them not only edible and healthy, but also powerful agents in the transition to a post-petroleum world.

As part of our research, we conducted a series of interviews with scientists, artists, and thinkers across Switzerland, Japan, and beyond. These interviews form a growing knowledge base. The process of watching and listening takes time, but we believe in the value of slowness when it comes to absorbing knowledge. Each voice offers a unique take on seaweed—not just as a material or food stuff, but as an agent of ecological speculation, artistic expression, and future thinking.

Many artists are now working with fermentation and seaweed, drawn by their transformative potential and ancient agency. My own contribution to this growing dialogue is the installation called Media Kitchen. It is a speculative, digitally designed space that imagines how food and eating might evolve if humans became Homo photosyntheticus. In such a future, if our biology adapted to photosynthesize—like cyanobacteria—what would our kitchens look like? What tools would we still need? Would we even need hands, if eating became obsolete?

For me, taste is fundamental. I insist that the food must be enjoyable. It creates a dual experience: pleasure, and reflection. The audience is drawn in by flavor and aesthetics, and then confronted with uncomfortable questions about sustainability, biotechnology, and environmental collapse.

Over the past three years, much of this research has focused on Japan and Korea. We traced the production history of Nori (known as Kim in Korea), exploring not only its culinary applications but its agricultural and ecological implications. Unlike land crops, Nori requires no fertilizers—it's cultivated by suspending nets in the sea and hoping nature will cooperate. It's a process bound to uncertainty, prayer, and the rhythms of the ocean.

After World War II, the sea floor near Ariake Bay—Japan's major Nori cultivation site—was devastated by bombings. Nori stopped growing. This led to a moment of crisis.

The solution came from an unexpected place: Kathleen Drew-Baker, a British scientist. She discovered that Nori’s reproductive cycle—unlike terrestrial plants—resembles that of fungi, involving microscopic spores and a symbiosis with oyster shells. Her lab-based cultivation method revolutionized seaweed farming. Although she never visited Japan, her published research was translated and implemented by Japanese scientists. To this day, a Shinto ceremony is held every April 16 in her honor, celebrating her as the “Mother of the Sea.”

In our research, we visited the Yamamoto Nori Company, who supply Nori to the Japanese imperial family. We documented their practices and their concerns about rising sea temperatures and algae blooms. We also interviewed young Nori producers who are navigating the uncertainties of climate change, saltwater flooding, and disrupted marine ecosystems.

The installation includes footage from these interviews, scenes from industry,ceremonies, and workshops. It tells a story about interdependence—between science and tradition, land and sea, human and nonhuman.

A central question remains: Can we imagine human resilience in line with ecological function and evolution? Can we regenerate, not just exploit, the living environments we depend on?

In a world shaped by climate change, biotechnology, and spiritual ecology, seaweed becomes more than a food. It becomes a teacher.