Around 50 members of the Gainesville community gathered on Sunday to witness the exhibit introduced as“A Seat at the Table: Food, Poetry and Art,” at the A. Quinn Jones Museum.
The exhibit served as a culminating project showcasing two significant workshops from October of last year, collectively titled “Recipes for Belonging.” Hosted by the Gainesville Immigrant Neighbor Inclusion Initiative (GINI) and Flavorful, these events brought both immigrant and US-born communities together to work and create activities centered on cuisine, art and poetry.
Ethan Maia de Needell, the 30-year-old Immigrant Programs Manager for GINI, said over 25 countries were represented over the course of both events. Food and art was the best medium to bring people together, he said, regardless of cultural differences.
“Our immigrant community makes up over one in 10 people in Gainesville and Alachua County, and that number is only increasing,” he said. “They’re helping to contribute and make our city as vibrant as it is.”
One of the activities during the workshops was the creation and translation of different traditional recipes. Those who attended the Recipes for Belonging workshop could bring their own recipes, share them with the group and translate them to share with different audiences.
Ivan Perez Medina, a 49-year-old chef from Puerto Rico, said the lack of Latin cuisine around Gainesville inspired him to share his culture and recipes with others.
“My main ingredient in my food is love,” he said. “Without passion, it’s not the same. You have to have both of those to have a good product, that’s the key.”
Perez Medina brought a pot of Sancocho soup to the event and shared his family recipe with the attendees. The soup, a traditional dish of Puerto Rico, is a hearty stew of meat and vegetables.
Other chefs, Like 31-year-old Robert Colon, said community bonding is what brought him to share his recipes.
“I think that food is a universal language that brings us all together, and we can all bond over it no matter what language we speak,” he said.
Flavorful co-owners Awa Kaba and Aisse Kane serve traditional African food at the A. Quinn Jones Museum on Sunday, Feb. 16, 2025.
In addition to the variety of food and recipes, the event also highlighted art and poetry throughout the exhibit. Across the museum, paintings and pictures decorated the halls with different backstories, many of them blending multiple cultures together.
One of the paintings collectively created by the attendees, titled “Recipes for Belonging #1,” represented elements of West African culture while also incorporating elements of American Southern cooking. The painting primarily featured two women symbolizing the Mende people of Africa, showcasing their rich and sophisticated cultural heritage. The artwork also incorporated elements like houses, religious symbols and eating utensils. Prominently displayed in the piece was a blueberry cobbler, a dessert featured at the exhibit. The cobbler was used to represent aspects of Southern cooking with roots tracing back to West and Central African culinary traditions.
“I really like how they brought the community together through art, food and poetry,” 53-year-old Margarita Vargas-Betancourt, who attended the exhibit, said. “It makes you feel like you belong in the Gainesville community.”
During the "Recipes for Belonging" workshop, a collaborative poem was created with input from all attendees. It incorporated a variety of languages including English, Spanish and French, uniting everyone through the shared activity.
At Sunday's event, while the dish sampling took place, Alachua County’s Poet Laureate E. Stanley Richardson read the poem, "A Seat at the Table," encapsulating the event's purpose. The poem talked about different customs, foods and traditions contributing to a greater sense of community, regardless of differences.
“It’s really nice to see a bunch of different people from many different countries who speak different languages come together around a common thing we care about, which is community and food,” Laura Gonzales, the 37-year-old director of Language Access Florida, said. “It's a really nice way to bring people together.”
Contact Gabriella Chavez at gchavez@alligator.org
Gabriella Chavez is a senior journalism major and Spring 2025 Caimán reporter. Whenever she's not writing, you can find Gabriella reading, creating playlists or playing with her cat.
