Tutu’s Kitchen in the upcoming E 'Ai Exhibition
With Artist, Mary Babcock

Do you remember the smell of your grandparent’s kitchen?  Do you have a favorite recipe from your tutu? We are looking for a few folks to join us in the EHCC Gallery for a friendly and informal recipe sharing experience.  

We are inviting: 

• Anyone who has a tutu’s recipe and a story, memory, or just the desire to share appreciation for this family gift of food. 

• Volunteers to assist with preparing the dish

Three recipes will be presented in the Ola Nā Iwi Gallery during the month of September and October, and the overflow of recipe stories will be available as an online recipe-share. If your recipe and story is presented in the gallery, volunteers will be there to help make it happen.  All you need is the love and spirit of your grandparent’s kitchen and the desire to share your experience with others. All ingredients will be provided!

This call is part of a work for the E ‘Ai Exhibition (description below), an exhibition that speaks to the variety of ways that island intelligence and the experience of food is felt. As a part of the exhibition's equitable and accessibility mission, meals will be shared with our houseless community, and we will invite participants to bring a family dish to share.

All recipe submissions are due September 5 on ArtCall, and we will be accepting recipes in our gallery until September 14, 2026

Call on https://calltocooks.artcall.org/

E' Ai Exhibition Concept

September 4 - November 28, 2026
Exhibition Opening: September 4, 2026
Curator: Kanani Daley
Gallery: EHCC + Ola Nā Iwi 

The exhibition explores the many ways island intelligence and lived experiences of food are understood, embodied, and expressed. It considers the systems, relationships, nuances, and challenges that shape lifeways across Hawaiʻi. This includes traditional knowledge systems along with their subtle and interconnected dimensions, including kilo, moʻolelo, aloha ʻāina, and the spirited  phenomena through which they are experienced.

The inquiry also engages contemporary political and social realities: inequitable access to nourishment alongside an excess of commercially produced products; and the broader economic and historical forces that continue to challenge the shaping of relationships, time, and knowledge that make food sovereignty possible.

At the same time, the exhibition invokes the intimate, relational, and cultural dimensions of food that extend beyond biological necessity. Food as a nostalgia, ‘āina as remembrance, and the inner-wilderness of the unconscious mapping our subtle bodies with the natural world.