HOW TO BAKE A FAMILY (2025)

As an Italian living in the Netherlands, this project began as a way to explore roots and identity with my children—born in a country that is not mine, to a mother of yet another nationality. The series is a humorous manifesto of togetherness on how cooking, caring rituals, and memory can hold a family close. It all started when I came across some small sheets of paper written in my grandmother’s unmistakable handwriting. There were recipes, but also scattered thoughts—phrases perhaps scribbled just for herself. Reading through them felt like finding her again. In those wordslived her joyful and positive way of seeing the world, of caring for us. This work playfully reflects on my grandmother’s legacy, its imprint on my childhood, and on the kind of childhood that I, as a father—that we, as a family—wish to shape for my son and daughter. Combining her advice, still echoing in our shared memory, her handwritten notes, fragments of vintage Super 8 films, and photographs of everyday gestures that span four generations, the project evokes an invisible but deeply shared space: a domestic landscape shaped by memory, imagination, and continuity. In returning to her words and rituals, I found not only a connection to the past but a way forward—a quiet teaching my grandmother had left behind. A way, perhaps, to bake a family.

Dedicated to nonna Maria (1926-2005)

Text by Nicola Moscelli