Artists in Conversation #2

Ksenija Hotić at Kuma International

March 27 2021 at 18h CET on Zoom

You missed the talk? Watch it on our YouTube channel!

Kuma International is excited to announce another series of online conversations with artists from Bosnia and Herzegovina who live in diaspora.

The second talk will take place on March 27 2021 at 18 CET and will welcome Ksenija Hotić, freelance photographer and cookbook food stylist, based in Toronto, Canada.

Prior to her photography career, Ksenija Hotić worked in the mental healthcare field for 11 years in various departments at CAMH (Centre for Addiction and Mental Health) and the University of Toronto. Her involvement with food started at a speciality European deli and butcher shop for seven years. In 2011, she became a member of the Toronto Underground Food Market and worked for three years as the in-house photographer and vendor manager of this innovative showcase for alternative culinary talent in the city at that time.

It was later on at the Depanneur that Ksenija was able to link her own experiences as a refugee with her sociology major and shared food as an important and effective tool to cross-cultural gaps through gatherings. She hosted over 30 drop-in dinners, supper clubs, as well as a Table Talk and Cooking Class at the Depanneur during the 8 years of her involvement there. In addition, from 2015 to 2017, she worked as a part-time cook, as well as a guest chef in various restaurants in Toronto.

After publishing two cookbooks (The Great Shellfish Cookbook, Penguin Randomhouse, 2018, and My New Table, Penguin Randomhouse, 2021), Ksenija is currently working on a third cookbook with Depanneur in Toronto, featuring 100 different cooks and their recipes/stories about the dish and often the experience of being a diaspora in Canada for those of other countries. The DepanneurCookbook will be equal parts documentary, manifesto and cookbook with thoughtful contributions from some of Canada’s foremost figures in food.

On a more personal note, Ksenija is also working on her own cookbook about Bosnian food and her journey to Canada. Ksenija’s family left Ključ on September 9th, 1992, stopping at refugee camps in Bosnia, Croatia, Slovenia, and Austria as they fled to Berlin, where the family spent the remaining few years. Three years later, they would find themselves in a land that seemed impossibly far away, and legendary: Canada, a vast land where everyone lived by a forest’s edge, or so they thought. Canada became their second home. Her family settled in Toronto in March 1995, the city of everybody from everywhere.

She finds things there that bring her joy and revive memories of home: the unique Kensington market, food places from all over the world, music that brings her to the days of her idyllic childhood, the Armenian coffeehouse down the street, music new and old, cuisine ingredients from everywhere imaginable, and the army of friends who have shared their worlds from Cuba to Iraq, and so many more. One of her favourite recent memories was finding a coffee grinder made in Yugoslavia, with the original box still intact. These little objects, flavours and places bring Ksenija closer to feeling what she felt at home and soften the brutal interruption of being torn away.

Her cookbook, full of love and happy memories and secrets, might be an ode to one of those burned books during the war in Bosnia, from the perspective of a refugee child still longing for a fire by the river and that wildly delicious pears picked for her by her father off the forest floor. The connection to food, hometown culture and nature is intrinsic to her book, which will delve into Bosnian heritage through the lens of cuisine, supported by the photography of the landscape, wild plants and other traditional ingredients that inform the recipes. Food and culture are reclaimed, here, with stories and memories to accompany every dish and even recipes from a few other Bosnians throughout the world.

MORE ABOUT HER WORK (published):

Her clients include Penguin Random House, the Drake Hotel, TIFF, VISA Infinite Dining, RBC, Amazon, the STOP Community Centre, OCAD, as well as various chefs and restaurants in Toronto. She also often covers fundraising & art/film/music/food-related events in the city.

Ksenija’s work has been published in print/online by the Globe & Mail, the National Post, NOW Magazine, Toronto Life, FORBES, Sharp Magazine, Chatelaine, Foodism, enRoute Canada, Men’s Fashion, Montecristo Magazine, Bay St. Bull, CTV’s The Social, House & Home, Sustain Magazine, CBC Canada and Oslobodjenje amongst others.

If you’d like to read a bit more about Ksenija’s journey, you can do so here: