Sorry, your browser doesn’t support embedded videos. Stories Project Stories 17.12.2025 Everyone Has a Relationship with Food: Test Kitchen Makes Contemporary Art More Accessible From left to right: Océane Bruel, Eeva Peura, Joona Sorsa, Jani Anders Purhonen, Niina Tervo, Eeva Rönkä, and Sonja Donner. Photo: Emilia Anundi. TEXT Hanna Hantula Share: Cooking and making art are both about creating experiences. Test Kitchen, founded in a northern Helsinki suburb of Pihlajamäki, invites people to explore the connections between edible material and art. What Is It All About? Test Kitchen is a shared performance space and laboratory run by artists and hospitality professionals. Its aim is to explore what kinds of things can be expressed through food and culinary materials, and how food builds communities and culture. The working group includes artists Sonja Donner, Eeva Rönkä, Jani Anders Purhonen, Niina Tervo, Océane Bruel and Eeva Peura, as well as chef Joona Sorsa. The project has received two years of funding from the Kone Foundation, starting in 2025. It is easy to walk past the white concrete building if the place is unfamiliar. The flat-roofed commercial space in Pihlajamäki, Helsinki, previously housed a pizzeria and a bar, but now the taped coverings have been scraped off the windows protected by metal bars. From a distance the space looks empty, but once inside it becomes clear that the kitchen is buzzing with activity. Present are chef Joona Sorsa and artists Sonja Donner, Eeva Rönkä, Jani Anders Purhonen, Océane Bruel, Eeva Peura and Niina Tervo. Someone is making coffee for the working group, another is pulling yesterday’s pizza out of the fridge. Tervo has baked delicious almond and lemon biscuits. The stainless-steel worktops gleam with cleanliness.“Test Kitchen is an exceptional artist’s workspace—it’s always clean,” Purhonen jokes. Test Kitchen is a place where artists, researchers, and hospitality professionals can explore the relationship between art, food, and edible materials. The idea is that combining art and food, and experimenting without preconceptions, can produce unexpected results—such as cleanliness in a context where it is not a given. However, not all the insights produced at Test Kitchen are visible to the naked eye. “Everything doesn’t have to be delicious, but the things experienced here must provoke thought and be interesting.” No Authority Figures In the field of food culture studies, people talk about the ‘artification’ of food. Put simply, this refers to treating a restaurant dinner as an art experience. The customer is not there to be pleased, but to encounter the chef’s vision. Is Test Kitchen part of this phenomenon? “Not really. If anything, Test Kitchen is the opposite of that kind of approach,” the group reflects. “In our view, everything doesn’t have to be delicious, but the things experienced here must provoke thought and be interesting. The setup must not be one where some authority figure shows the audience what is refined or valuable.” The artists also do not want to be authority figures to one another. One of the aims of the Test Kitchen project is to develop new, more sustainable ways of working within the field of contemporary art. “We haven’t really created any specific structures for working,” the group says. “But we try, all the time, to treat one another as human beings.” In practice, this means that no one leads the group; decisions are made together through discussion. In this interview too, the Test Kitchen members speak as a group. A large part of Test Kitchen’s activity is also about enabling the work of people outside the core group. Others interested in the connections between food, art and culinary materials have been invited to work in the space. Efforts have been made to pay them as fairly as possible for their work, which, unfortunately, is not always self-evident in the contemporary art world. “It’s important that there are different possibilities for experimentation here than there are at home.” Something Entirely New Test Kitchen began in 2024, when artist Niina Tervo brought together a working group in an empty commercial space. At first, the place was renovated at a frantic pace. Among other things, a worn dance floor left over from the bar days was removed. However, old elements have also been preserved—including a distinctive beige and terracotta chequered plastic floor, which was allowed to remain. When the Kone Foundation decided to fund the project, the renovation work stepped up a gear. For example, professional-grade ovens were acquired for the space. “It’s important that there are different possibilities for experimentation here than there are at home,” the group emphasises. Not all experiments are directly related to food or eating. Techniques familiar from the kitchen may be applied, for instance, to textile art. Group member Eeva Rönkä has dyed fabrics in the kitchen. “Drying, preparing dyes, boiling materials—all of this resembles cooking, but it’s useful for many other things as well,” the group reflects. One of the most unusual experiments was an event realised with Heta Bilaletdin and Samuli Tanner, in which guests were invited to eat a large portion of mouth-numbing Sichuan pepper. The artists had built a system in the space that vibrated at different sound frequencies. “They asked the guests to focus for a couple of minutes on the sensation in their mouths and think about which frequency the experience was connected to. It was really interesting and strange!” the Test Kitchen members recall. However, the point of Test Kitchen is not to pursue oddity for its own sake. Rather, the aim is to do something that would feel meaningful to people beyond art circles. Photo: Emilia Anundi “It feels natural for many different kinds of people to come and experience things around food and edible materials.” Art for Everyone Test Kitchen’s programme is far removed from pretentious fine dining or gleaming white art galleries. Over the summer, for example, Sonja Donner organised a public screening of matches from the Women’s European Football Championship. At other times, Test Kitchen has functioned as a gallery space: works shown there include a video piece by Eetu Sihvonen, and in the corner of the room there is a small browsing library related to food and edible materials, curated by Hikari Nishida as part of her Temporary Bookshelf project. Food is something that each of us has some kind of relationship with. Without food there is no life. Food transcends language barriers and builds communities regardless of culture. “That’s why it feels natural for many different kinds of people to come and experience things around food and edible materials,” the Test Kitchen members say. The threshold is also lowered by the fact that events are kept either free of charge or affordable for audiences. As a result, Test Kitchen has attracted people beyond those already familiar with contemporary art. When the barred door of Test Kitchen opens, there is a strong chance that the person stepping inside is a local resident, curious about what their neighbours are up to. Contact: Instagram @k.o.e.k.e.i.t.t.i.o Food art is a form of artistic expression that engages with edible materials and the social dimensions of food. It draws on ideas, techniques, and tools familiar from the culinary world, traditional food and drink cultures, or the field of relational aesthetics. At the heart of food art lies an intention or perspective through which an ingredient, interaction, or ritual associated with food or eating is presented in an engaging, evocative, or critical light, as a component of an artwork. Food art may, for instance, explore the sculptural qualities, cultural history, or tactile nature of an ingredient. In doing so, it transforms edible materials into a language of art that is both more accessible and more expressive. Photo: Emilia Anundi