Tables Insulaires is a collective and collaborative artistic project led by artists Aude Fourest and Valentin Poudret, exploring a universal yet deeply cultural gesture: eating together. Through commensality—the act of sharing a meal, stories, and knowledge—the project examines the connections between food, territory, memory, and identity.

Our approach unfolds across several French-speaking island territories, including the Magdalen Islands, Guadeloupe, and Martinique. Exploratory residencies, encounters with local residents, food-sector stakeholders, artists, and people involved in the social, cultural, and food-related dynamics of their respective territories, as well as the organization of communal meals, will form the core of this research. These encounters will be accompanied by photographer Kasara Napoléon and, in the Magdalen Islands, by artist Yvan Loiseau.

We wish to make the table a space for dialogue and the sharing of knowledge, where recipes, memories, culinary practices, stories of exile, cultural cross-pollination, contemporary issues, and ways of inhabiting an island territory can come together. These experiences will gradually take shape as an editorial work: Tables Insulaires, a graphic and culinary journey, as well as through various ephemeral artistic forms.

As part of this residency, we are delighted and honoured to have the opportunity to work twice at L’imprimerie, centre d’artistes in Montreal. These periods of presence will provide an opportunity to share our approach, continue our research, and foster exchanges around the project.

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