Kihült menza

Kihűlt Menza (Cold Canteen) was a collaborative project initiated by a group of visual and media artists who found themselves sharing office spaces while maintaining their artistic practices alongside everyday employment. The project emerged from a common desire to break away, even temporarily, from the routines of wage work and create a space where artistic thinking, exchange, and community could take priority.

Through a series of shared lunches, the group explored food as a medium of care, solidarity, and collective responsibility. Instead of accepting the limited and often low-quality food options around their workplace, the artists began cooking for each other, transforming the everyday act of eating into a communal and creative practice. These encounters later developed into a public art project that extended beyond the office environment and invited others to participate.

During the public events, meals were organized in various urban locations across Budapest, turning overlooked or transitional spaces into temporary sites of gathering and exchange. Each occasion connected food with the specific character of the location—from a fruit installation on Szabadság Bridge to edible interventions at Lehel Market, the transformation of an underpass with cotton candy, and a communal grill event by the Danube. The project explored themes of sustainability, limited resources, urban life, and social connection through playful and participatory artistic actions.

Kihűlt Menza created a temporary community around shared experiences, questioning the separation between artistic practice, everyday labour, and social responsibility. By bringing the private ritual of an office lunch into public space, the project proposed art as a way of reconnecting people, places, and forms of care.

Participants: Erdei Krisztina, Fischer Judit, Hódi Csilla, Kerpely Adél, Mécs Miklós, Molnár Ágnes Éva, Szemző Zsófia, Romhány Vera