Tasting Justice: the politics of food in art

Presented by LASALLE's McNally School of Fine Arts, Tasting Justice: the politics of food in art consists of two days of performances, talks, workshops and activations including artist-orchestrated meals, performance lectures and a collective singalong.

Together we will consider how artists across Asia and Australia use food in their creative practices to address urgent social, political and ecological issues and to rethink the ways we grow, share and value what and how we eat.

Tasting Justice: the politics of food in art is curated by Francis Maravillas, Madeleine Collie, Marnie Badham and Stephen Loo (Tastes of Justice Curatorial Collective) and will include talks, activations and performances by Nathalie Muchamad, Keg de Souza, and Critical Craft Collective, as well as a workshop by Elia Nurvista. 

Download full programme and artist bios.

Tasting Justice: Artists and curators talks 
23 Oct 2025, 6:00pm–7:30pm
Block F Level 4 #F405, LASALLE’s McNally Campus
Admission free, registration required

This event is a prelude to our forthcoming book Tastes of Justice: The Aesthetics and Politics of Food Art Practices in Asia and Australia. The book reveals the diversity of creative and cultural practices in contemporary food art and performances in and between Asia and Australia. It examines the ways in which these engender new frameworks for understanding the sensuous, affective, social and material dimensions of the alimentary in art.

The book will be published by Routledge at the end of 2025 and this programme offers a chance to preview the themes of the book and meet some of the artists whose work is featured therein.

Tasting Justice: Reading Palm workshop with Elia Nurvista
24 Oct 2025, 2:00pm–4:30pm 
Block H Level 3 #H303, LASALLE’s McNally Campus 
Admission free, registration required

Elia Nurvista's Reading Palm investigates the circulation and value of palm oil through tasting food and reading Max Haiven’s Palm Oil: The Grease of Empire (2022), focusing on the chapter 'Whose Surplus'. Eating and reading together highlight how palm oil binds surplus bodies, those rendered exploitable or disposable within capitalism. This collective digestion transforms palm oil from a colonial commodity into a medium for hospitality, dialogue and the rethinking of global food production, circulation and consumption.

Tasting Justice: Off the menu
24 Oct 2025, 5:00pm–7.30pm
Amphitheatre, LASALLE’s McNally Campus
Admission free, registration required

Join us for an evening of tastes, performances and songs exploring food, memory, cinematic histories and colonial entanglements. Nathalie Muchamad’s I wonder how it tastes like traces the journeys of breadfruit from plantation histories to today’s “superfood” mythologies; Keg de Souza’s Bananas: A Wild Story unpeels the cultural and ecological politics of this everyday fruit through performance and tasting; and the Critical Craft Collective invites audiences to join Rasa Sayang (For the love of food)—a participatory singalong celebrating food as a language of care, kinship and shared heritage across the Nusantara archipelago.

Acknowledgements

Tasting Justice: the politics of food in art is presented by the McNally School of Fine Arts, LASALLE College of the Arts, University of the Arts Singapore, in collaboration with the CAST research group at RMIT University, Art & Design UNSW and the Food Art Research Network.

This event has been assisted by the Australian Government through Creative Australia, its principal arts investment and advisory body, and by the McNally School of Fine Arts.

The Tastes of Justice Curatorial Collective wish to express special thanks to Dr Cissie Fu, Head, McNally School of Fine Arts, and Critical Craft Collective for their support and advice. 

We are also grateful for the assistance provided to the artists and curators by students from the BA (Hons) Art Histories and Curatorial Practices: Asia and the World programme at LASALLE—Sharifah Sarah Binte Sayed Hud Alhabshe, Samyuktha Kandaswamy, Feng Yuxin, Lin Huiyi Rachel and Iman Bathia Peera.