Kenya Ama, baker and sculptor
A conversation about the privileges of food, the meeting point of art and baking, the pitfalls of social media and making anti-hegemonic bread.
this interview has been condensed for length and fluidity.
The doorbell screamed throughout the apartment and the sound of heavy boots stomping up the steep marble staircase meant that the pastries had arrived. Kenya Ama had a massive black backpack slung over one shoulder and an even bigger bicycle over the other. We all sat eagerly as she opened up her bag and laid out the goods on the table: alfajores marplatenses and a few palmeras. There were twice as many of us than she’d expected and so we carefully quartered each pastry. The alfajores, two wafers stuffed with dulce de leche and covered in chocolate, went straight down the hatch but the palmera, an intricate puff pastry shaped like a palm leaf made me pause, savoring every crackly layer as it broke apart with each careful nibble.
Ama arrived in Buenos Aires from Bariloche, a town surrounded by lakes and forest on the Andean side of the country, nearly a decade ago to study visual arts and sculpture. “This city has something that traps us. We all think that everything must happen in Buenos Aires. Back in Bariloche, I was convinced I could only make art if I was here,” she explains. Seven years and sixty five courses later, she is currently finishing her last class and is debating a move back to Bariloche to open a bakery. “I started selling bread during the quarantine and now it is all I can think about. I can’t think about making sculptures. I made bread for all my school projects this year.”
Like many projects that were birthed in the pandemic, Casa Ama Pan began in a cramped apartment kitchen as a means to make ends meet. In all corners of the city, professional and home cooks alike are democratizing an old restaurant model where power is often concentrated in few neighborhoods and fewer hands. And Casa Ama may be amongst the most eccentric: she is indifferent to social media, happy to be off the grid, keeps her production as small as possible and above all protects her integrity as a worker and every piece of bread that comes out of her oven.
left, Kenya’s ‘palmeras’; right, Kenya amongst palmeras
You started selling bread and pastries during the pandemic but you’re about to finish a visual arts degree in sculpture. Do you think that the two mediums will coexist? Do you see yourself leaning more towards baking or moving into the art world?
At school I’m having a hard time because I’m just thinking about bread. I can’t focus on making sculptures. So I’ve been bringing bread to class, which are all online. The first half of the year were all exercises that they assigned to us, but now we are developing our own projects. There was one project where they asked us to choose an object and write something, do an action and draw it. I chose to make a cremona (a circular piece of bread made with a series of A-shaped doughs created by anarchist bakers in the late 19th century; pictured below). That was a moment for me of being like, ok I want to explore bread in this context. The process of kneading dough is a little easier to see the similarities. I did a photo series of me kneading and it was really interesting to see that my hands have a sort of language. I never had paid attention to my hands in that way. Right now I am mentally working out how this can transform into an artistic work but the most important part was recognizing that I am a baker. This is what I do. I am interested in eating as an artistic work. I’ve thought of putting together a dinner series. I like the idea of creating artwork that doesn’t remain static. It’s just this moment that remains in your imagination. The whole commercial side of art really discourages me from creating anything. I understand that we have to make a living but I really hate that part of art. That really started getting to me as I studied. They really prepare us to enter the art market and I felt like I was being educated to produce and not to create. It’s very clear what types of works succeed in the art market and which ones don’t. I’m not interested in trying to break into that world. Bread is simpler. I make bread and I don’t have to question it.
That is a really interesting point you're making. I think that great art questions our hegemonic systems but to be a successful artist you must exist within a very hegemonic system, right? The same thing happens in the restaurant world. People challenging the hegemony are doing a lot of lip service. Obviously there are lots of people challenging the conventional model but you see a lot of fine dining or cooks that talk a lot about respecting ingredients and agriculture but their success is predicated on them folding into hegemonic hierarchies. The pandemic really demonstrated that, right? The restaurant world doesn’t truly value very many people that exist within it. If this year had been different, do you think you’d still be working off the grid?
I can’t really imagine this working another way. I work small scale. I don’t even sell to cafes or little markets. I’m very picky with that. I bake in the morning and deliver in the afternoon. Now a friend is helping me with delivery because it was too much for me alone. This is the only way that allows me to protect everything. Myself, my clients, my product. I think working independently is great in that respect. But there are a lot of pros and cons. I am pretty much invisible. I don’t exist. I work because I need to work. I should register my brand and have my product approved but in order to do that I wouldn’t be able to work from home. You can’t have an operation out of your own kitchen. That really limits how much or what I can do. The other day I was talking to my parents because I am thinking about moving back and doing this project there. I would love to buy a real oven, a mixer, and have more space. But register the business? No way. That is so far away because I just don’t have the means. How? I like being under the radar though. I’m down with the anti-system. There are a lot of really great projects right now that work like this.
Definitely. There are a lot of projects that are functioning outside of the system. I really don’t like the term anti-system though. The underground is a system. It’s very different but it is still a system with its own set of rules and limitations. There is a network of people. It just happens to be a system that is more humane. I think calling it anti-system de-legitimizes it and what we are seeing now and honestly I think the underground we are seeing is more legitimate than the accepted system. I get the idea. I’m just sensitive to words. The under is interesting because it is much more democratic. Opportunity is spread more evenly.
Yes and during this pandemic the alliances and connections have really strengthened. I think a lot of us found ourselves unprotected by the system and there has been this incredible union between projects. Less competition. I really hope that stays. It’s incredibly positive. That happened to me with a stand in the Mercado de San Telmo called Beba. They invited me to be there and cook and use their space as a place to work and create.
I’m really curious what will happen with this underground scene. We are incubating a new culture that at some point will have to turn into something else, more legitimate if you want to call it that. I wonder if the restaurant world will really look at itself and make changes or if we are all going to go back to the same old thing because it is more comfortable. What will this moment mean in 10 or 15 years?
There are lots of people working out of their homes. I think that it is a great opportunity for the food scene to value the subjectiveness that each individual can add. There is this world that Instagram really empowers, we all end up doing the same thing. That is the only thing I dislike about working this way. I am obligated to use Instagram as a medium. We are all looking at one another through a screen and you start to see people kind of replicating one another.
Right. Right now people are working on their own and there is more freedom to create how and what you want. What I hate about social media is that it anonymizes us to a certain degree. Food is such a human expression, and the way we digititalize everything I think really dehumanizes the entire process and ourselves as creators of the final product. But then if you aren’t constantly using social media and aren’t constantly growing that public, it’s like your work has less value, which tells us that we have less value. I’ve really wanted to take a step back from social but that’s the way it is perceived, as a step back. It is a step back maybe to another moment when humans communicated differently but I think we have a really violent relationship to the idea of stepping backwards. Not all advancement is good and not everything that they did in the past is obsolete.
I just think it is so strange. We are all trying to beat an algorithm. We are so focused on what happens behind a screen. We are so dependent on that connection but so disconnected at the same time. I hate how important social media is to my work. It’s really the only way I can sell. That is why I started thinking about going back to Bariloche to have a physical space and be somewhere where the people have to come find me. I just want to make bread. I don’t care about all the other stuff. I want to live in a way that is more analogical. I want to be more connected and not feel like I have to upload everything. Digitizing our realities is really difficult for me when I think about it too much. We care too much about the image.
For me, dropping my engagement with social media has recalibrated my mind. I feel more focused on my work and what I want to develop.
For me it’s about seeking out origins and revaluing what is important to me. Bread is that for me. Bread has become this really industrialized product. It’s a product that has no real value. It’s not delicious. You can’t buy bread that comes inside a plastic bag and lasts in your refrigerator for a month and think that what you are eating is bread. Returning to breadmaking, which takes time, it requires you to respect this living thing. And it also makes you relate that handmade process with a lot of other things.
Yeah. The bread from the grocery store and the way we use social media and technology have the same quality in that they don’t require you to think. So for the example of bread or any other processed food, you go to the store, you buy something basically pre-cooked, you heat it up or put it together at home, and you really don’t have to think about the food you eat and much less about the people and processes behind that food. When you are cooking something from scratch, you are much more involved in that process, your mind is more active, you aren’t just thinking about what you are making but it’s also a moment to simply think.
You start to have a different concept of time. The more we are able to cook for ourselves, the more intelligent we become, because your mind becomes conscious of our food and all that it implies in a different way. The world is really constructed so that we are not autonomous. We are all very dependent and especially in the rhythm of a city which gives you very little time for yourself. Having the time to cook my own food is a big deal. Being able to choose what I eat is a huge privilege too. And that feels like a responsibility too. I have the privilege to be able to choose the way I consume or don’t, being able to choose is a huge deal, and that ability is a responsibility.
It is a privilege and it is designed to be that way because like you said as you become more aware and less dependent on those habits, you consume differently. You start paying more attention to what you buy, where you buy it from, who you buy it from.
I have a hard time with that. When you begin to really analyze it, it is so frustrating just how difficult it is to live a life that fully supports sustainability, and especially if you live in a city. At least this one.
It’s garbage. Consuming responsibly becomes a choice when it is a right. And because it isn’t treated as a right, it becomes this exclusive or elitist purchase. Producers also have to choose and making that choice to produce responsibly isn’t easy either. And then it reaches you and you have to sell for more because it’s more expensive and this basic food like bread becomes elite. How do you deal with that as a producer who could be considered to have an elite product because of the price and ingredients you use?
Yah, I mean I’m not making a lot of money working this way. Not even close. But I think that my customers understand that they are investing in something. In me. In my work. In this kind of a product. For some of them it might not be expensive, for others it may be something special. I think of myself, I try really hard to consume in a way that is just. I feel that is my responsibility. I really think that if the people who have the means to consume justly, which isn’t just the elite, I buy organic vegetables and it costs exactly the same if not less. I think that if people treated this as a responsibility, if everyone worked to change their perception around food and adapt our habits, this could really begin to reach more people.