Kunstavond! 'You Don’t Eat Alone Here'

ROFFA RICE CLUB (@roffariceclub) is an initiative that started during covid times advocating for affordable rice-based food and centering contemporary take on Indonesian food.

Stretching its wings, the RICE CLUB is focusing on community building in sharing awareness about eating habits and creating a shared-table dining experience. One of our beloved eating habits for example eating with our hands becomes subject to discomfortness. Our desire to connect with food in the Western world becomes discouraged.

When we hear diasporas yearning for food, we feel a need to alleviate the absence of home thus ROFFA RICE CLUB opens its doors to its first supper club based on LIWETAN, an Indonesian way of eating together on the floor, sharing food from one long long long spread. We will unpack the (vegetarian) food together, an unboxing, a ritual, a moment of arrival.

For many Indonesians, food is how we bond, despite differences, despite distance. A simple question like “Makan favorit lo apa?” (What’s your favorite food?) often opens up stories, nostalgia, and belonging.

This question is also explored by artist, Nabila Ayu Aviani (@Nabilaayuaviani)(she/her)(b. 2000, Indonesia) who is an Indonesian artist raised in the United Arab Emirates and based in The Hague, the Netherlands. In 2023, she graduated from the BA Fine Art programme, specialising in painting, at the Royal Academy of Art (KABK), The Hague.

Shaped by diaspora, intimacy and influences from pop culture, Aviani’s practice explores memory as a fluid and emotional landscape. In an installation, she interprets Liwetan through figurative painting, she constructs narratives that balance humour and vulnerability, using autobiographical moments to emphasise shared experiences of longing, belonging and self-performance.

Altogether we will celebrate the space that allows a community to form where you don’t leave hungry, and you don’t leave alone.

Participate eating for 10€ or take a look at the installation for free.
(Important to note: the event is open for public during Kunstavond, people may come to take a look and document during the eating process)