For her residency, decoratelier is building a book cabinet in Cassonade, where Charlotte will temporarily house a quarter of Anne’s cookbooks. This marks the beginning of taking over and continuing a collection. In the cabinet, everybody with a fondness or curiosity for books and cooking is welcome to visit, to read or write a letter, a recipe, a poem or a book, and think together about what a cooking library could be.
Charlotte Koopman (1975, Groningen, NL) is a co-founder of the culinary collective Otark, established in 2009. In addition to having cooked a weekly Sunday breakfast for 13 years, Otark cooks in various rhythms and contexts, with changing lineups, responding to film, sound, language, words, and the weather. Otark has a strong preference for Handwork / Close-ups (the near) / Off-beat (the far out) / Slow-mo / Slapstick / Roots and Leaves. Otark works with foundations versus the wind, home cooking on the go, and works, like chefs do, within the framework of a timeline, rhythm, repetition, seasonality, and impermanence. Charlotte Koopman writes, reads, draws, and photographs, but always from within the kitchen.
Anne Flaten Pixley (1932, Neuilly-sur-Seine, France) is an artist who grew up in Minnesota, lived in various parts of the US, and moved from California to the Gard in southern France in 1985, where she still resides.
Anne used to work with light, texture, textiles, paper, and the handmade. She painted, drew, wove, spun, made sculptures and installations, traveled, read and cooked. She collected textiles, baskets, ceramics,
kitchen tools, art books, travel books, cookbooks, books that made her laugh out loud. Shells, spices, white beans, wild rice, wishbones—the list is endless. Her largest collection is of cookbooks.
Charlotte and Anne met at the Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery in 2010 and have been friends ever since. Their practices overlap and complement each other.
