Cooking with Mama: Zine Reading, Solidarity Auction and Collective Cooking

Cooking with Mama is a series of community gatherings in Berlin and beyond that weave together personal and collective hi/stories often overlooked or erased. Through food practices and storytelling from Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, Northern and Central Asia, the gatherings create space to learn about the de/colonial significance of food and the ancestral and local knowledges carried by people whose lives have been shaped by Russian and other colonial and imperial violence—legacies that continue in Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine and other forms of domination across the region. Together, we engage with experiences of loss while nurturing care and solidarity. The gatherings pay homage to the long-standing initiative Cooking with Mama by Kurdish artist Hiwa K.
During the festival, the gathering unfolds in two parts. It begins with a collective reading of handmade textile zines documenting Cooking with Mama gatherings in Berlin, shared food practices, personal stories, and lived experiences. Participants are invited to leave reflections on textile, tracing imperial and inter-imperial legacies, sources of knowledge, and the gaps and silences that shape them. Grounded in the belief that solidarity must move beyond words, the gathering includes a solidarity auction of one textile zine. Funds raised will directly support mutual aid efforts in Ukraine.
In the second part, activists from the Ukrainian grassroots initiatives Street Aid Daily and Solidarity Kitchen will share stories from their work on the ground and invite participants into collective cooking. Through reflections on wartime food infrastructures, forced displacement, and homelessness, they will speak about organizing support for vulnerable groups in Ukraine. Alongside other direct actions confronting unjust realities, food and communal cooking become political acts that create space for solidarity.