Safiya Robinson
Artist Statement
My work begins at the table. Positioning food as metaphor, material, method and meeting place, I examine the social, political, and emotional dimensions of nourishment. I use food to ask how we remember, how we care, and how we come into relation with one another. Kitchens, tables, and shared meals become sites of inquiry—spaces where histories of survival, migration, and intimacy are made tangible. I am interested in food as an archive that is alive and unstable: something that changes through touch, time, space, constraint, and collaboration. I am guided by my philosophy of Intentional Nourishment: the practice of using food and shared ritual to cultivate dignity, pleasure, and meaningful connection. Historically, the culinary has often been relegated to hospitality—seen as service rather than a site of artistic, political, or conceptual inquiry. My work actively challenges this division.
Bio
Safiya Robinson, (also known as sisterwoman vegan), is a chef, researcher, interdisciplinary facilitator and culinary artist exploring food as a site of memory, culture, wellness, and care. Through workshops, participatory meals, written commissions, and collaborative projects, she designs embodied experiences grounded in her philosophy of Intentional Nourishment: the practice of using food and shared ritual to cultivate dignity, pleasure, and meaningful connection. These offerings support deeper engagement with self, community, and the social and cultural lineages that shape how we eat and live. She approaches food as an emotional and relational technology — something that holds memory, mediates intimacy, and teaches us how to care for one another. Inspired by her Black American, Jamaican and British heritage, her culinary focus centres vegan soul food through a distinctly London lens: thoughtful, deeply considered plant-forward cooking that layers bold flavour, cultural memory and contemporary expression. She has been recognised by Code Hospitality's Top 100 Women in Hospitality (2021) and 30 Under 30 (2024), and featured in British Vogue, The Guardian, and Bloomberg, among others. Her year-long debut restaurant residency was named the number one vegan restaurant in London by Time Out. She also hosts and produces The Intentional Nourishment Podcast, bringing together chefs, artists, therapists, and other thinkers and makers to co-create, explore and expand the philosophy.