Reviving lost dishes of the north
Artistic duo Place Courage engages guests with ancestral recipes through embroidery, ceramics and written stories
Visitors to the McCord Stewart Museum are invited to sit around a 9-metre banquet table displaying more than 200 stories of lost foods from Nordic communities.
On the table are postcards, videos and audio, as well as ceramics, embroidery and other handcrafted objects that visitors can interact with.
The exhibit, The Banquet of Lost Northern Dishes, took place between March 7 and March 8 and was created by the artistic duo Place Courage. Comprised of sisters Maude Levasseur and Marie Samuel Levasseur, the duo creates multisensory exhibits focused on the intersection of art, truth and justice.
In December 2024, the sisters spent two weeks traveling across Finland, Sweden and Norway, connecting with various communities on the topic of lost foods and recipes.
“We are talking about food and loss, but we are also approaching this subject of losing things or mourning things and how we can reshare and connect with each other,” Maude said.
The banquet discusses hunting, foraging and fishing using the stories of the Inuit, Innu and Sámi peoples alongside stories from Quebecois, Finnish, Swedish, Icelandic, Norwegian, Danish and Alaskan communities.
The installation is part of the ongoing FIKA(S) festival, an immersive festival that aims to build bridges between Scandinavian, Nordic and Quebecois cultures through sharing music, cinema, gastronomy and other cultural traits.
“As a festival that is always striving to create new bridges of communication and exchange between the nordicities, this project beautifully embodies the kind of connection we’ve been building since our inception in 2016, linking us to the Scandinavian and Nordic countries,” said Christel Durand, artistic director of FIKA(S).
According to Levasseur, lost foods are foods that you have memories of, but can no longer taste. For example, a dish that a grandmother once made for their grandchild or a recipe with ingredients that are less accessible due to ecological change or cultural shifts.
Some participants even told stories of foods they don’t miss. A Norwegian farmer shared the story of slaughtering a pig and, not wanting to waste the blood, used it to make blood waffles, which ended up being disgusting.
Levasseur used the example of a caribou, an animal that has played an important role throughout the project. She explained that caribou are an emblematic animal in Quebec but are also endangered.
“[Caribou are] one of the first things that many Inuit and Innu people people wanted to talk about,” Levasseur said. “They want to talk about caribou and traditional hunting because they can't do it anymore out of respect for nature. But at the same time, they wanted the transmission [of culture] to happen.”
According to the sisters, the installation is an opportunity to connect and practice grief in a healthy way.
“I hope [people] will connect [with] the stories and also leave their own stories,” Levasseur said. “It is always very moving when people take the time to sit down and [share] their stories. Also having a space where we can meet and grieve together is something that we don’t have a lot in our social space.”
