For the first appointment of Sofrito, the Careof set will host Uncontrolled Denominations, a project by Leone Contini, an artist who investigates the relationship between art and food through an anthropological approach. On the occasion of the Chinese New Year, Leone Contini creates a dinner inspired by Jiaozi (Chinese dumplings), a traditional dish associated with the New Year celebrations.

In popular superstition, this type of food indeed brings good luck for the coming year. Dumplings, in countless forms and names, are widespread from Korea to the Iberian Peninsula, forming a Eurasian continuum. The act of making and eating them is associated with elements of conviviality and domestic intimacy. In China, the family gathers for the New Year and collectively "makes" the jiaozi; in our imagination, making dumplings is associated with family life, the domestic hearth, and intergenerational suggestions, while in Russian culture it is used to create familiarity among people who do not know each other well.

The dumpling seems to be an inclusive universal medium—perhaps also because a thin layer of dough wraps the filling. Jiaozi, manti, khinkali, tortellini, and ravioli are each linked, from time to time, to national or regional identities.

Starting from the hybrid dumpling “Jiaozi di Carmignano,” a paradoxical outcome of the project Nutri la Mente (a Tuscan-Chinese cooking workshop, Prato 2011), Leone Contini proposes a game of transitions where the control procedures that govern the construction of Euro-Asian dumplings are deactivated, opening up to countless and uncontrollable possibilities of hybridization.

The project unfolds in two phases: the first part, conceived as a workshop, involves an immersion into the Paolo Sarpi area to search for the ingredients needed for the recipe. Subsequently, within the exhibition space at Careof, the dough will be prepared and the dumplings made to be shared with the other diners.

The actual dinner will be guided by a lecture/performance, enlivened by storytelling and spontaneous drawing. Like in a botany lesson, Leone Contini delves into the invisible details of the Chinese plant world, illustrating his research and proceeding with the cooking of the assembled dumplings.

The intervention stems from the long-term project ToscoCina, intertwined with other recent projects such as Km0 and Feed your Head Nutri la Mente, in which the artist focuses on subsistence agriculture within the Chinese community in Tuscany and Brianza, and on how concepts like coexistence and cohabitation are revealed also through food, which “continually becomes the object of a symbolic investment concerning equally the construction of the self and the other.”

In particular, Uncontrolled Denominations was developed at the Delfina Foundation, London, during a residency as part of the project The Politics of Food in January 2014.

Sofrito is a series of meetings with artists invited to conceive an evening involving the creation and experimentation of a dinner as a means of mediation and communication. The Careof set transforms its state and mode of use each time, to host different foods and food projects that come to life inside the exhibition space or in the kitchens of Careof residences. The dinners are open to everyone, with reservation required, and those who do not find a place at the first seating can always book for the second.