Meech Boakye’s lush, organic, and often edible artworks find their footing in floral, fungal, and microbial relationships. The Portland-based artist, originally from Winnipeg, views these relationships as “armatures for learning how to be in a community.” This leads them to share everything from abundant “digital gardens” and recipes for nettle rennet and fig sap cheese to foraging walks and fermentation workshops. Boakye is also the co-founder of the annual Garlic Fest, a “community-rooted love letter to garlic” previously hosted at two urban micro-farms.
I chatted with the artist to learn more about their food-focused practice. This interview has been condensed for length and clarity.
MERCURY: Hi, Meech! I’d love to start by hearing about what you’re working on currently.
Meech Boakye: Well, I would say my practice is kind of nebulous. But at the moment, the one constant for going on three years is Garlic Fest, which I work on with local artist and dear friend, Jade Novarino. Its silliness is kind of its strength. It's inspired by [Les Blank's 1980 film] Garlic is as Good as 10 Mothers and modeled after the Gilroy Garlic Festival in California. We wanted to honor that legacy and bring it to Portland as garlic growers ourselves and as lovers of garlic.
A lot of my work recently has been virtual, like cookbooks. I worked on a project called Research Poems based on foraging rennet for cheesemaking, as well as ways to make cheese without using animal rennet, through nettles, fig sap, and thistle stamens.
Your work feels more about process than product. On the other hand, there’s an element of “product” in it, since so much of your art is consumable in the end. How do you think about the product of edible art?
It's difficult being in the contemporary art world. You do need to create work that sells, sometimes. And I haven't quite figured that out. I don't know if I ever will, and I think that's okay. It just means that my work is exhibited in different ways. Maybe it's an installation, or it's a workshop. It's been fun to create ephemeral work because it leans more into performance than anything else. It just can be. I'm interested in that method of making, because my artistic training isn't in anything traditional.
When it comes to food… it's never really about the food. It's about bringing people together, mostly for free events. The food is meant to be a gift. Making food for people means that I can exhibit care. All this has been twisted and tainted in ways that I probably should have anticipated. There’s a return to trad wives, crunchy nationalism, and granola moms who are also maybe white nationalists. It’s wild to watch it happen in real time.
Your food work aims to foster connection, ultimately. I'm thinking of your screening of Foragers [Jumana Manna’s film highlighting Palestinian foraging restrictions under Israeli conservation law] as part of a wider ritual, with foraged food gifts and reflections on US property law. You also staged a cheesemaking workshop within an art space in Toronto. These are gestures of care, rather than talking about care. It's the opposite of Uber Eats contactless delivery.
That’s a wonderful way to frame it, because that is what freaks me out.
Back in December, you also made holiday treat boxes [with Alley Frey] to raise funds for the New Seasons Labor Union. I wonder if you think about the invisibility of labor and food industries in your work.
Yeah, absolutely. What drew me originally was not understanding where my food came from. I spent high school in Brazil, so I understand the disconnect and the distance between the places from which we're getting foods. Gardening, foraging, working at a farmers market—this kind of work has been really helpful for me to understand who makes my food.
Thinking about invisible labor is the thing that got me into [my practice], as well as invisible knowledge. A lot of the research that I do on foraging thinks about the kinds of labor and knowledge that weren’t passed down to me because it was forcibly assimilated away. I'm thinking about what my grandparents have taught me, or not taught me, because those cultural things weren't deemed necessary or helpful.
Even starting a garden can be an integral learning process. I never realized how many different nutrients and microbes and worms go into a garden. That is what's creating my zucchini. It's not just me doing the work—it's all of these different parts that come together. I work alongside my partner Ava Robins, who is co-chair of the New Seasons Labor Union. There are these microcosms in which we cooperate to make something much bigger than ourselves. Gardening is one of the best ways to learn about labor. Being on a picket line is another way.
Do you feel like decay or digestion is part of your artistic process? Does your work shapeshift when the edible part is gone?
I love decay. I love decomposition. I'm interested in using decay as a way to understand death. When I make bioplastics, I often let them decompose in my garden.
Transness, I think, is a lot about shapeshifting. We have textbook definitions of what a transition might be, but it’s so different on every personal level. Shapeshifting can be a state of becoming that doesn’t stop. Transition continuously happens, whether we end surgery or hormones. It’s a state of becoming.
So I think of myself a lot like a shapeshifter. It comforts me when my work does the same thing that I'm doing. In a lot of ways, I am decaying. Thinking about decay is a way to think about death and aging and my own body moving through the world. Working with fermentation is similar—food is being preserved, but there is a decay that's happening. Things soften, texture changes.
Since your work focuses on ritual and rhythm and decay, how do the changing seasons in Portland show up in your creative process? Are there materials you're excited to work with this spring?
Season is a big part of living here! Portland allows you to sit in each season for a little bit. Cherry blossoms are some of my favorite things in the world. I love all of the spring shoots that come up. When it comes to summer, I'm so overwhelmed by all of the abundance that I just run with it, and move, and preserve, and capture everything that I can. Summer is frantic. I think it allows me to cook better. It allows me to be with people. Fall and winter is when I’m planning upcoming projects. As soon as spring comes, I put my computer away. I'm outside and I'm trying to capture as much as I can.
Do you walk a lot?
All the time. I don't have a car, so I walk and take transit everywhere.
Any favorite routes? Places that feel creatively potent?
One of my favorite things to do is to walk in one direction for like, two and a half hours, if I can. I take as many alleyways as possible because I can often forage a little bit. I love Peninsula Park. Portland has neighborhoods with really beautiful landscaping, amazing ornamentals, and edibles. In the fall, my favorite thing about walking is smelling the fires lit in people’s homes.
Who's been nourishing your practice in the community lately, artistically or emotionally or politically?
Jade Novarino has been a big inspiration for me. Her practice is so rich because she is so grounded in real labor work at Campo Collective, doing the work of teaching, farming, calligraphy, and mail art. And the friends I forage with, who are also the ones I go dancing with. Dancing, foraging, and farming—these are quintessential Portland things that bring me so much joy. Without these moments of bliss, it would be a stressful time to be here. It’s like, okay, I'm on the dance floor, and now I'm doing my taxes, and now I'm seeing the news, and now I'm at the picket line, and now I'm in the garden. The people and plants here create a container in which I can oscillate without losing my mind completely. I feel held by Portland in a way I didn’t expect [when I moved here from Canada].
How can our readers tap into your work?
Garlic Fest will be at the end of garlic harvesting season, likely late August or September. It’s a one-day gathering to celebrate those who love garlic, who cook with garlic, who grow garlic. It's a love letter to garlic. We're not looking to bring in more traditional festival things—there are no food carts, for instance—it's just a way to get together based on shared love of garlic. There’s an educational component, plus tote bags and little prints, maybe a garlic flag!
But most of all, I love talking to people. The best way to reach me is to get a meal together.
Find Meech at meechboakye.com or on Instagram @ghostyboi.
