2025 - 2026 FACTORY student led: Colonial Cuisines in Netherlands
APRIL 20, 2026
Led by Ivor Glavaš & Richard Liu
When: 17:30 - 19:30
Location: House 417
Richard and Ivor continue their food-based factory in Breda, focusing on dishes shaped by colonial routes and sustained through everyday survival. Despite histories of displacement, scarcity, and adaptation, these foods persist. Ingredients travelled from China, India, and West Africa to Indonesia, from Indonesia to Suriname, and from Suriname into Albert Heijn. What remains today is a long, entangled line, just like a noodle stretched across oceans, borders, and generations.
Often still among the cheapest options, these dishes exist as comfort food. In this sense, food becomes a form of presence, even a quiet resistance, something that continues despite colonialism.
The session begins with an overview of the history of migrant food in the Netherlands. They will present images, menus, and fragments of personal archives.
The factory then unfolds through collective food making. Together, participants will prepare sambal using Madame Janette peppers, an important ingredient in Surinamese cooking. Through eating and close kitchen conversations, the group reflects on how food survives, transforms, and carries traces of layered colonial histories.
This student initiative is facilitated by DAI by making it part of the syllabus 2025-2026 and by providing space and time for gathering. It is embedded in the curriculum component WEAVER and participation is credited with ECTS.