An old cliché says that the way to a person’s heart is through the stomach. Conflict Kitchen does not take that saying lightly.
The Pittsburgh take-out restaurant and public art project only serves the cuisines of nations with which the United States is in conflict. The restaurant was designed to use food as a vessel for starting a constructive dialogue.
On Thursday, April 7, Dawn Weleski, co-director of Conflict Kitchen, will discuss the project during a visit to Penn State Behrend. Her presentation begins at 4:30 p.m. in the Robert and Sally Metzgar Admissions and Alumni Center on campus and is free and open to the public.
Conflict Kitchen’s mission is to help engage the general public in discussions about countries, cultures and people that they might know little about outside of what they see in mainstream media coverage. The restaurant, which features a single nation’s cuisine at a time, has reinvented itself with Afghan, Venezuelan, North Korean, Palestinian, Cuban and Iranian versions. Conflict Kitchen also organizes a variety of educational and outreach activities, including a cultural festival that accompanies each menu change.
Dawn Weleski’s visit to Penn State Behrend is sponsored by the Mary Behrend Cultural Fund and the Student Activity Fee.
For more information, contact Matthew Levy, assistant professor of art history, at 814-898-6078 or email mll33@psu.edu.