Cooking Therapy: Reading Bibimbap

Duration: 60 minutes

This session explores bibimbap not simply as a Korean dish, but as a way of thinking about labour, leftovers, care and creativity.

Rather than presenting a single origin story, the gathering introduces several possible histories of bibimbap: as a meal connected to ancestral rituals, to court cuisine, to agricultural life, and to the widely circulated story of daughters-in-law who ate only after everyone else, mixing together the remaining rice and side dishes into their own meal.

The project is not interested in confirming one “true” origin. Instead, it asks how different histories continue to shape the way we understand food, domestic labour and cultural memory today.

During the session, participants are invited to assemble their own bibimbap using approximately 12–15 small side dishes prepared from seasonal ingredients. By bringing together local ingredients with the structure of bibimbap, the meal becomes a living experiment in translation rather than a reproduction of an “authentic” recipe.

As we eat together, we reflect on a simple question:

How can we reread a dish without romanticising the labour and inequalities that may have produced it?

Rather than celebrating suffering, the workshop proposes bibimbap as a practice of transformation — the ability to reorganise what is left behind into something shared, meaningful and nourishing. It invites participants to consider how acts of care, improvisation and everyday creativity continue to shape our lives beyond the kitchen.

The event concludes with a shared meal, where conversation becomes part of the work itself.