the kitchen desk

open conversation

In this conversation, Valeria Mata, author of Todo lo que se mueve, and Mercedes Villalba, author of Manifiesto Ferviente, will explore the role of kitchen spaces and practices in their writing, inviting us to think about forms of writing interrupted and contaminated by what remains outside the editable frame. Taking the kitchen table as a workspace that spills beyond the desk, they will reflect on the stories that its particular nature both opens up and closes off.

Drawing on anthropology, artistic practices, and research into food, Valeria Mata explores forms of knowledge that exceed the visual and the textual. Mercedes Villalba investigates the relationships between art and nature, focusing on processes of transformation and decomposition.

bio

Valeria Mata is a researcher and social anthropologist. Her research explores intersections between artistic practices and anthropology, the political and cultural dimensions of food, and critical reflections on the notion of displacement. She is interested in experimenting with an anthropology that takes both the visual and the textual into account, while also moving beyond the primacy of sight and semantic content to investigate other forms of relating to the world—ones that recognize sounds, gestures, smells, tastes, and touch as having an important epistemological status. She is the author of Plagie, copie, manipule, robe, reescriba este libro (2018) and Todo lo que se mueve (2021). In 2021, she edited Comer relaciona (y confronta) mundos, published by the Centro Cultural de España en México. Her current research explores the circulation of gifts.

Mercedes Villalba, Ph.D., is a writer and researcher. She holds a Ph.D. in Anthropology, History of Science, and Feminist Methodologies from the University of California, Davis. She is the author of Manifiesto ferviente (2019), A las Plantas (2022), the poetry books Colores and A los botánicos, as well as articles, poems, translations, and essays exploring the creation and decomposition of art and nature. Her Manifiesto Ferviente has been translated into Spanish, Portuguese, Catalan, and Kichwa, and is part of the permanent collections of Printed Matter, SAIC, and MACBA. Her forthcoming book, Triangulaciones, will be published by Cielo Santo at the end of 2026. She is currently working on a book about milk and another about ceramics.