Freudian Bites returned to London with a cross-disciplinary collaboration that transformed the familiar into something entirely new.
Following our summer adventure in the Loire Valley, the latest edition took place on Thursday, 25 September, bringing together London-based Polish artist Joanna Wierzbicka and architectural designer and food artist Niyanta Sharma from the collective Playte.
The evening wove together art, food, architecture, and storytelling in a site-specific intervention shaped by collaboration. Guests were welcomed with playful bites and a special drink, guided through tactile prompts that heightened the senses, and treated to a curated menu offering new perspectives on both Joanna’s and Niyanta’s creative practices.
Huma Kabakci, founder and curator of Freudian Bites, worked closely with Joanna and Niyanta to bring this intimate dining experience to life in her home.
To mark the occasion, Joanna created a limited-edition artwork, shared exclusively with attendees.
It was an intimate and memorable night celebrating connection, creativity, and sensory exploration.
Joanna Wierzbicka is a Polish-born London-based artist working across photography, sculpture, video and installation. She graduated from ECAL (École Cantonale d’Art de Lausanne) and University of the Arts London. A recipient of the Swiss Government Excellence Scholarship, her work has been shown at Saatchi Gallery, Split Gallery, Bomb Art Factory Foundation, Generation & Display Gallery in London, Fort Institute of Photography in Warsaw, Jedna Dva Tri Gallery in Prague and Espace Arlaud in Lausanne. Wierzbicka works across sculpture, photography, and installation, with a particular focus on fabrics—used clothing, printed, or dyed textiles. She creates sculptures that explore the interplay between soft/hard and tension developed through the genre of body horror, where forms resembling intestines, organs, organisms and monstrous shapes emerge. Food has been a recurring element in her work, serving as a material starting point. Wierzbicka gathers organic waste, forage, and collects friends’ hair after haircuts, approaching this process with the care and attention of a meal preparation. These materials are either developed into physical objects, photographed and then printed to create a new sculptural form, or used as dyes.
Niyanta Sharma is an artist and architectural designer with Indian heritage, who is also the founder of Playte – a gastro-architect collective who use local food as a tool for collective healing. Her work is rooted in community—creating site-specific experiences that explore the intersection between art, architecture, and the politics of food.
