“Unearthing connectedness; a journey through memory and place-making” by Ozoz Sokoh (Kitchen Butterfly), is the second installation of the Reclaiming the Tongue video series, curated by journalist and poet Wana Udobang.
Ozoz Sokoh is a food explorer, budding curator, and Traveler By Plate for whom ‘Food Is More Than Eating’. She began journaling about food in 2009 on her Kitchen Butterfly blog. Central to her work is connectedness through food, as well as the unearthing and celebration of Nigerian & West African food and drink history, paying homage to West African ancestors and their expertise, resilience, and creativity. Her research and documentation also explore the impact of West African intellectual contributions to global development from the American South, through the Caribbean to Europe and Latin America.
Her current project, ‘Coast to Coast: From West Africa to the World’ traces the histories and edible trails of West Africa and its diaspora through ingredients and ‘commodities’ – rice, black-eyed beans, okro, palm oil, sugar cane. The outcomes include a series of films available for screening; and Feast Afrique, a site which includes an open-access digital library of 250+ books from the 1800s to date, as well as a hall of fame, data-driven work on the role of food media in marginalizing West African voices, and more. This work explores memory as resistance, oral history, language, double consciousness, capitalism, culinary colorism, and challenges myths and assumptions about the presence and contributions of West Africans to the world, sharing a 400- year old legacy, and its impact on the transformation of global western economies.
Ozoz has spoken at TEDx and at conferences hosted by the Culinary Institute of America. Her work has been featured in Smithsonian Magazine, Gastro Obscura, CNN African Voices, Anthony Bourdain’s Parts Unknown, and more.