Since the age of fourteen, Margherita has lived with a rare and severe allergy to all fruits and vegetables. Her first anaphylactic shock was triggered by a strawberry ice cream. Unable to eat the fruit, she became intensely preoccupied with it. What began as a bodily prohibition turned into sustained curiosity: how strawberries are cultivated, how they smell, where their flavour comes from, and how they circulate through culture, industry, and imagination.

This fascination developed into a collaborative inquiry with Alice Héron, whose practice brings a strong sensitivity to texture, taste, identity, history, experimentation, and fermentation. Together, they approached the strawberry as both material and method: an entry point into exploring perception, embodiment, and the systems that shape what and how we consume.

Across six acts combining performance, edible experiences, and sensory encounters, the work introduces the histories, cultures, and production systems of the strawberry, alongside alternative modes of engagement that foreground vulnerability, desire, and refusal. Rather than offering consumption, the project stages an intimate negotiation between body, plant, and infrastructure, inviting participants to reconsider how knowledge, taste, and care are produced.

Photo credit Alessia Calzecchi and Martin Flugelman
Light design by Martin Flugelman
Hosted and made it possible by Villa Medici, Rome