A Recipe Exhibit At LA’s La Plaza Honors Those Missing In Mexico

Food and recipe exhibits are a staple at La Plaza Cocina, the kitchen wing of La Plaza de Cultura y Artes museum in downtown Los Angeles. One recent exhibit highlighted chocolate; another, the kitchen wisdom of Mexican grandmothers.

A new exhibit that opened last month is different, organizers say: it’s focused on keeping alive the memory of people who’ve gone missing in Mexico, and it does so with recipes of their favorite dishes, contributed by family members.

It’s titled Recetario Para La Memoria: a recipe book for memory.

The exhibit is “really a different way of looking at food,” said Ximena Martin, La Plaza’s director of public programs and culinary arts.

“It’s to highlight the power of food and memory, and that memory of our loved ones,” Martin said, “and in this case … to bring acknowledgement to the lost disappeared in Mexico.”

More than 100,000 people are listed as missing in Mexico, many of them believed to be the victims of drug cartel violence.

The exhibit’s photos were taken by photographer Zahara Gómez Lucini. It’s based on two photo and recipe books of the same name she’s produced as part of a larger project with family members of those missing, some of whom have organized search groups.

She collaborated with two nonprofit groups: Las Rastreadoras del Fuerte, which searches for the missing in the state of Sinaloa, and Las Buscadoras de Guanajuato, which conducts searches in central Mexico.

A photograph from "Recetario Para La Memoria."

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Zahara Gómez Lucini

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Courtesy of La Plaza De Cultura y Artes

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“My hope is through these photographs of something as simple as a meal, those who haven’t lost a loved one can consider the pain of others,” Gómez said in a statement.

The recipes for the books and the La Plaza exhibit include entries like “egg flan for Juan Francisco” and “mole for Christian.”

Several photos convey a sense of emptiness, like that of a small table laden with tortillas and cheese set in a darkened room.

“This is just another component on how a simple dish kind of brings to light what's happening in Mexico, and also kind of brings forward that person,” Martin said.

A few of the photos are not of food, but of search parties scouring the desert. Martin said half the proceeds from sales of the recipe books goes to the two nonprofits that search for the missing.

The exhibit is set to run through Nov. 19.