Photo by Jester van Schuylenburch, 2017.
Museum of Edible Earth, brings together a collection of edible soils from across the globe. The museum invites the audience to review their knowledge about food and cultural traditions using creative thinking. The Museum of Edible Earth addresses the following questions: What stands behind earth-eating tradition? Where does the edible earth come from? What are the possible benefits and dangers of eating earth? How do the material properties in earth affect its flavor? Its goal is to constitute an extensive collection of soils suggested for oral use from the most countries possible and, through their different cultural uses and histories, but also with the help of cross-disciplinary partnerships, workshops and collaborations, redesigning and reconsidering the earth.
With the view to understand more the reality of contemporary geophagy, and also to constitute a research basis for the Museum of Edible Earth, the masharu Studio has been building up an extensive database of the edible soils for oral use available on the market. More than 400 different types of soils from 34 different countries have been purchased through internet and in cultural shops, as well as collected during the field trips, to form the basis for The Museum of Edible Earth. The collection contains earth samples from Belarus, Cameroon, China, Congo, Côte d'Ivoire, Cuba, Ecuador, France, Germany, Ghana, Guatemala, Haiti, India, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Mexico, Morocco, the Netherlands, Nigeria, Pakistan, Russia, Slovenia, South Africa, Suriname, Ukraine, UK, USA, Uzbekistan, Zimbabwe.
World Clay Map – Design by Luuk van Veen, Amsterdam, 2021
The Museum of Edible Earth contributes to the cross-fertilization between science and art. Geophagy among animals as well as geophagy among humans is scientifically researched. Papers about it are published in the journals on anthropology, history, psychology, sociology, chemistry, and biology.
The Museum of Edible Earth is a movable museum. Its presentations are mixed-media and participatory, often involving earth tastings, workshops, discussions and screenings. With this project, we develop an innovative way of engaging to questions of environment and sustainability, by engaging to these thematics through the sensorial experience of “tasting the environment”. The audience is at the core of our work, as our Museum invites the visitors to taste the earth, share their tasting experience and engage in dialogues around our relationship to the environment, but also cultural differences. Through an innovative artistic work process, the Museum of Edible Earth puts the audience at the center of a participatory interactive process based on the eating of the Earth.
Interactive map from the Museum of Edible Earth website
Museum of Edible Earth (2017–2022)
From 2016 to 2022 MEE has travelled and was physically presented across seventeen countries including Armenia, Austria, Belgium, Cuba, Germany, Ghana, Hungary, Indonesia, Japan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Nigeria, Russia, Suriname and Zimbabwe within about a hundred exhibitions and public programme events. The travelling nature of the project with ‘nomadic’ presentations, field trips and collaboration with local partners has been important. During the trips of MEE the collection was constantly enriched with new materials, stories and taste impressions.
Archive of the Museum of Edible Earth, installation by Basse Stittgen, Amsterdam, 2023
Photo by Mathias Krogsøe
Museum of Edible Earth, exhibition design (2020–2022)
In order to develop a sustainable presentation we started collaboration with a product and a bioplastic designer Basse Sittingen, a graduate from Master Programme of the Dutch Design Academy. His project on the production of bioplastic out of blood has been exhibited in multiple places in the Netherlands and internationally. We developed a design for a modular system for the presentation of MEE.
Archive of the Museum of Edible Earth, installation by Basse Stittgen, Amsterdam, 2023
Photo by masharu
Modular system for the presentations of MEE, constructed of metal and ecoboard, designed and built by the designer Basse Sittingen. Exhibition in diptych Amsterdam, 2020. Photos by Alex Hunts.
Museum of Edible Earth, online database (2020–2022)
The collection of MEE has more than 500 earth samples, eaten by humxns across the globe. The materials originate from 44 countries: Armenia, Austria, Belarus, Cameroon, China, Congo DR, Côte d'Ivoire, Cuba, Denmark, Ecuador, France, Germany, Ghana, Guatemala, Haiti, Iceland, India, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Ireland, Japan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Malawi, Mexico, Morocco, the Netherlands, Nigeria, Pakistan, Portugal, Russia, Slovenia, South Africa, Suriname, Switzerland, Thailand, UK, Ukraine, USA, Uzbekistan and Zimbabwe. A vast majority of the samples were gathered during the field trips, as well as purchased online and received as presents. The website www.museumofedible.earth is an online database, where the samples of MEE are partly presented.
Screenshots from the current versions of www.museumofedible.earth
1. New feature allows to filter samples by taste. 2. Visitors impressions on the tastes of one of the samples
Taste of Earth (2022)
Through the website www.museumofedible.earth our audience was invited to give feedback on their earth tasting experience. In 2020–2022 we received more than 600 comments describing tastes, flavours and associations reflecting on more than 140 earth samples. Statistics were collected accordingly. It is thus a participatory and a constantly evolving work. Currently it is possible to find samples based on the taste and see the overview of the most frequent tastes in the collection.
1. Statistics on impressions on taste of earth, collected through www.museumofedible.earth, larger words represent the impressions that come across more often, graphic design by Olga Ganzha; 2. Screenshot of Tastes Map on MEE website 3. Earth tasting circle, graphic design by Olga Ganzha.
Earth Catalogue
Printed catalogue of 41 pages of the samples of MEE has been produced, where a special attention on top of each page is given to the tastes of earth, along with the samples photos, background stories, and references.
Pages taken from the Catalogue
Eating earth is not recommended by food authority and reminds at your own risk.
Credits:
Founder - Dr. masharu (they/them)
Project Manager - SasaHara (they/them)
Graphic Designer - Olga Ganzha (she/her)
Product Designer - Basse Stittgen (he/him)
Community Storyteller - Elvira Semmoh (she/her)
Multimedia Designer - Dinesh Basnet (he/him)
Web Designer - Raphael Pia (he/him)
Data Manager - Sas Holweg (they/them)
