Title: suStained
Program: Traditional, Illegal — A Series of Food Activism Events conceived by Nikos Karaflos for Dexamenes
Location: Kourouta, Dexamenes, dex.Silo.01
suStained transforms dining into a multisensory performance — a purposeful act where tradition is seen through the lenses of prohibition, institutional control, and collective memory. This is not merely a meal; it is a performative narrative exploring the complicated connection between law, culture, and food.
A traditional meal, deeply rooted in the local food culture of Kourouta, is served: homegrown lamb and rooster -raised outside industrial systems-, accompanied by Hilopites — handmade local pasta made with eggs from the backyard, a sauce crafted from traditional tomatoes -from traditional, uncertified seeds-, and homemade red wine. Though each dish honors generations of knowledge and craftsmanship, they all fall outside modern regulations, considered illegal for not meeting contemporary standards.
At the heart of the installation, the communal table and its wearable tablecloth become powerful symbols of community and the collective memory of tradition. The tablecloth, initially a protective covering, is worn by the participants like clothing, physically uniting them in shared experience. As it collects stains — evidence of engaging in a practice deemed illegal — it embodies the collective guilt and complicity of performing a tradition now deemed outside the law. By transforming from an everyday object into a piece of wearable evidence, the tablecloth highlights the tension between preservation and prohibition. At the close of the event, the stained fabric is raised as a visual installation: a silent testament to ancestral knowledge lived in defiance, and a communal act of resistance suspended in space.
Through this lived experience, SuStained looks into the ways today’s society cuts food heritage off from daily life, bringing in new rules that turn old food traditions into forbidden actions. What happens when tradition changes from an act of memory to an act of lawbreaking? How does taste become a tool of resistance?
In this space where food becomes symbol, the meal emerges as a choreography of surveillance and compliance — a landscape where the familiar meets the paradoxical, and ritual transforms into political gesture.
suStained is culinary activism: an invitation to reclaim not only ingredients and recipes but the very acts of preparation, sharing, and care that sustain cultural continuity beyond legality. It is a collective defiance, a reclamation of ancestral knowledge through embodied practice, and an urgent question posed to the future of tradition.
Participants:
host: Nikos Karaflos
illegality facilitator: Irene Kalogirou
fellow diner 1: Georgia Kotretsos, THE ΤΕΛΟΣ SOCIETY
fellow diner 2: Eleni Tranouli, founder of ODASSIEN
fellow diner 3: Christina Androulidaki, founder of CanGallery
fellow diner 4: Marianna Ignataki, artist
fellow diner 5: Adrianna Iakovou, restaurateur & founder of The Cookhouse Cyprus and creative collaborator at ODASSIEN
fellow diner 6: Panagiotis Siafakas, cook and member of Nomade Et Sauvage
fellow diner 7: Michalis Pogosian, cook and member of Nomade Et Sauvage
illegal cooks: Stavros Koussis, Theodore Kostopoulos, Gikas Xenakis
photography, videography: Giagkos Papadopoulos
assistant videographer: Konstantinos Rigoulis
creative direction, text: Nikos Karaflos
