In 2025, Lab’Bel continues to develop the Lab’Food project, engaging with artists who use food as the central material in their practice, at the intersection of sculpture and performance.
As part of the Lab’Food project, which explores the relationship between food and artistic creation, Lab’Bel organized a studio visit with Naomi Feigelson, a young artist and independent chef completing a six-month residency at the kitchen lab of Villa Belleville, a space dedicated to emerging artists in eastern Paris.
Her work, centered on culinary experimentation, draws attention to the transformations of matter. Through journeys, near and far, as well as gustatory, textual, and visual research, Naomi Feigelson traces the lifecycle of food, examining its finitude and potential for renewal. Using elements collected from the places she inhabits, she ferments flavors, revisits tastes, shapes, and textures to create original participatory performances.
During this visit, we had the chance to taste the result of several months of research and experimentation as we discovered Soft Shells & Ice Cream Collection and Disoyster—two projects that, as their names suggest, draw from the imagery and materials of the sea and its shores.
In Soft Shells & Ice Cream Collection, unexpectedly flavored ice creams are placed on salt rocks within a seascape spread across the floor. Each participant is invited to choose a pearlescent shell to gently scoop up a soft, creamy bite.
For Disoyster, participants took a hands-on approach, crafting delicate rice pearls (shiratamago), which the artist then served individually on a translucent rock.
Curator: Léo de Boisgisson
Naomi Feigelson (born in 1998, Paris) is an artist and independent chef whose practice revolves around culinary experimentation. By intertwining her sensory experience with memory and collective knowledge, she seeks to create a space of absorption. Her process highlights the metamorphoses occurring between different states of matter. Playing with colors, textures, and scales to create an element of surprise, she allows components to transform not only within the bodies of spectators but also in their minds. She enjoys misleading and betraying the senses to create tension between individual and collective expectations.
The creation of a contemplative state is a crucial tool in her practice:
“It allows me to transmit stories and knowledge that must be preserved. My works are ceremonies where every gesture matters. My goal is to reach a state of collective mindfulness to reveal our connections with what is both within and beyond us.”
Instagram of Naomi Feigelson
Read the article on www.miam.world
Villa Belleville, residency space, Paris 20th arrondissement
Download the brochure in French
© Clara Skoglund