Cocina Colaboratorio: Mesa Migrante

Mesa Migrante is a participatory space by Cocina Colaboratorio that understands the table and cooking as practices of situating oneself in the world. In a global context marked by forced migration, hardened borders, the expansion of monoculture, and slow disasters that quietly transform bodies, landscapes, and food systems, the project activates a migratory table as a mobile, participatory kitchen moving between Santo Domingo Tomaltepec (Oaxaca), Mexico City, and Los Angeles. Through the intertwined gestures of naming, cooking, and remediating, workshop participants are invited to share food, memories, and absences: invoking ingredients that are no longer available; living yet undocumented (“un-inherited”) recipes; transformed territories; and the forms of resistance that emerge alongside these shifts. Recipes and reflections generated during the exchange—culinary, symbolic, and affective—are documented, giving rise to a collective, migratory cookbook that evolves with each activation across cities and borders. Mesa Migrante is a commission of Active Cultures, first presented with LagoAlgo in Mexico City in February 2026. In September 2026, its Los Angeles chapter will be presented at the Feminist Center for Creative Work as part of FOOD: A Convening, a two-day conference examining food as medium, system, archive, and territory.