Not all journeys take place on roads. Some journeys and memories unfold within the body, where hunger, satiety, sensation, and labor form the most primordial experience of life.

“Floodplain of the Body” is a performative gathering, where we bring together staple foods, sound, and poetry. We begin with sounds of resistance and everyday life—echoes from the street and from the table—leading into a live reading of poetry in different languages. Through these voices, we emphasize bodily gestures and food memories shaped by hunger and survival.

The foods we offer are unseasoned staples, served on containers made of tapioca. In Brazil, tapioca carries a layered history: it is rooted in Indigenous culture while also bearing the legacies of colonialism. Visitors are invited to dig, gather, scoop, and chew these foods with us—standing, squatting, sitting, or walking—gestures that evoke different cultural practices of eating.

In nineteenth-century Mexico City, for example, communal kitchens became essential gathering spaces. People known as los agachados would squat around large pots, sharing simple dishes as a response to social inequality and governmental neglect. This history informs our proposal: here, visitors may squat or eat in low positions, serving themselves and engaging in shared nourishment.

Each gesture and posture is a form of bodily labor, echoing both the rhythm of floodwaters and the physicality of survival. These actions recall human migration and adaptation, while also offering the most basic comfort: satiety, renewed energy, and nourishment exchanged between people.

Staple foods themselves carry life. In the history and present reality of famine and man-made starvation, they act like seeds resting in a floodplain, reminding us that simple foods sustain not only the body, but also fundamental acts of care.

The body is a floodplain: a space where memory, survival, and care converge. Our bodies endure hunger, but they also carry the capacity for sharing. In famine and siege, humans have learned to merely survive. In contrast, we call for living with dignity. We should not starve—and we must not allow others to starve. On this floodplain of the body, survival becomes inseparable from care, connection, and shared dignity.

Concept: Stomach Strategy (Amanda Bobadilla, Jian Langjie, Nathalia Favaro, Xiao Zhang, xindi)

Research: Xiao Zhang, Jian Langjie, Amanda Bobadilla

Installation Design: Nathalia Favaro, Jian Langjie

Sound: xindi, Nathalia Favaro, Jian Langjie

Poem, Text: xindi

Translation from English to Portuguese: Nathalia Favaro

Management and Production: Amanda Bobadilla, Jian Langjie

Performance: Nathalia Favaro, Amanda Bobadilla, Jian Langjie, xindi

36th Bienal de São Paulo

Not All Travellers Walk Roads - Of Humanity as Practice

Conjugations: Várzea: Várzea: spaces for relie- Spatial Strategies