“We did not land on Plymouth Rock. Plymouth Rock landed on us”
– Malcolm X
For the 8th edition of Freudian Bites in collaboration, Huma Kabakci has invited multi-disciplinary artist victoria helena and a collaborating chef (to be revealed soon) to disrupt the mythology of Thanksgiving.
This dinner will coincide with the national holiday in the United States that commemorates a mythical 1621 harvest feast shared between English settlers and the Wampanoag people. Framed as a day of gratitude, family gatherings, and abundance, it has become one of the country’s most emblematic rituals of belonging. Yet beneath its warm, domestic imagery lies a contested history: Thanksgiving mythologises colonial encounters, masking the violence, displacement, and erasure of the Indigenous peoples that occurred.
Freudian Bites with victoria helena will explore the dichotomies within the rituals of gratitude vs erasure, inclusion vs violence, assimilation vs adaptation, truth vs propaganda, and mutual aid vs individualism. By examining and questioning these notions both Huma and victoria in collaboration with a collaborating chef will creatively respond with a supper club that aims to acknowledge and reframe privilege as an act of community building and re-contextualising our current socio-political constructs.
For this occasion, victoria helena also has designed merchandise for all the supper-club goers with shirts that read “IMMIGRANT”, proceeds of sales will go to All Our Relations.
Shirts are locally procured from the Isle of Wight, made from organic cotton with plastic free packaging.
If you cannot attend the event but would still like a shirt for £35 (plus shipping), please use the QR code below:
victoria helena (she/they), b. 1977 Sweden (Polish/Croatian from USA) is a multinational artist based in London while maintaining an international practice. Raised in a Polish, Croatian, and Catholic working class tradition as an undocumented immigrant in the US for most of their childhood, victoria helena quickly learned the profound importance of diasporic assimilation and ‘passing privilege’. This unique lived experience, further complicated by neurodivergence, queerness, the entanglements of abuse, epigenetics of war, and complex trauma, indelibly informs their multidisciplinary work as it traverses varying states of powerlessness and hope. victoria helena currently maintains a studio practice in Hackney. In addition to commissioned public artworks, victoria helena’s pieces reside in private collections across the United States and Europe. They are an alumnus of the Royal College of Art, having earned a Masters in Sculpture with distinction in 2019. victoria helena has also participated in the 58th International Venice Biennale, been shortlisted for the prestigious Mark Tanner Sculpture Prize, and completed the coveted Benson-Sedgwick Residency.
