Melinda Ridaura

Melinda Ridaura Harvey, born in 1978 in Ramos Arizpe, Coahuila, is a Mexican visual artist with a multidisciplinary background in interior design, museography, gastronomy, sculpture and humanities. Her work, a fusion of installations and performance, explores Mexican identity through the lens of gastronomy and reflects her rich Mexican, Spanish and English cultural heritage.

During her time in the Mexican film industry, she developed a special fondness for historical projects and food styling. At the end of 2020, she decided to make a radical change in her life, moving to another country and exploring other professional paths. She currently resides in Edinburgh and is dedicated to facilitating therapeutic workshops at the psychiatric hospital. In this new context, she combines her passion for art with her social vocation, using cooking, art and ceramics as tools to promote well-being. In her free time she dances, creates alebrijes and works on the second edition of her family recipe book.

Maite Laborde

She was born in Mexico City, where she lived and studied until she completed her Bachelor's degree.
Since she was little, she was attracted to dishes that were prepared at home, so she dedicated a lot of time of her childhood and youth to the kitchen. She studied Pedagogy at UNAM (1982-1986). She moved to Boston, MA, USA, where she lived from 1988 to 1993; it was there that she decided to specialize as a chef by completing a diploma at Cambridge School of Culinary Arts, Massachusetts, USA in 1989-1990.
She moved to Cambridge, England (1993-1995) and perfected her English by taking the "Proficiency in English" course at the University of Cambridge.
Since then, already in Mexico, she has worked in food preparation and menu design, specializing in the presentation of dishes in a professional manner as a Food Stylist in fields ranging from Editorial (Mango Editorial 2014-2016; Delicias de la Cocina and Gourmet Experience of Liverpool 2018-2019), to Commercial (Advertising projects for Bimbo, Herdez, Superama, Marinela, LALA, Nutella, Nutriolli, among others; and for restaurant image: Las Palomas, Malinalco and El Edhen in CDMX; 2016-2024), and Entertainment (in Period Series: Sitiados III, 2018 and Travesuras de la Niña Mala, 2020).
In parallel to her work, she has taken the following Specialization courses: Food Styling Course in Another Style for Cooking; Pre-Hispanic Food Course “The 300 dishes of Moctezuma” taught by Rodrigo Llanes at CEGAG; Food Illumination Course, taught by Nacho Urquiza; Molecular Cooking Course, at ASPIC Gastronomic Institute; Course in Modern Dessert Techniques at La Postrería, taught by Chef Fernanda Covarrubias.
She personally worked on and printed a recipe book entitled “My favorite recipes”, illustrated with watercolor drawings made by herself.

Maco Sánchez

Born in Madrid in 1968, she has lived and worked in Mexico, intermittently, since 1993. She holds a degree in American Anthropology from the Complutense University of Madrid (1986-1991) and a Master of Liberal Arts in Museology from the Harvard University Extension School, Cambridge, MA (2003-2005).
She has managed the association of art critics Curare, A.C. (1993-1997) and Abel Quezada, A.C. (2007-2012); and has been manager of the studios of Jan Hendrix (1997-2000) and Francis Alÿs (2016-2020).
Among her most recent projects, she has been associate curator of the exhibition Jan Hendrix. Tierra Firme (MUAC, CDMX; Bonnefantenmuseum, Maastricht; MAHG, León, 2019-2022); and co-curator of Curare. Poisons, Remedies and Critical Strategies, 1991-2010 (MUAC, 2022). In the editorial field, she has edited: OMR 1(1983-2015) (Turner, 2020); A Thousand Threads, on Guillermo Santamarina (Alias, 2023); Atlas/Casa Jan Hendrix (Citi Banamex/RM, 2024).

Benito Taibo

(México, 1960) es escritor, periodista y entusiasta promotor de la lectura entre los jóvenes. Inició su camino en la literatura como poeta con Siete primeros poemas (1976), Vivos y suicidas (1978), Recetas para el desastre (1987) y De la función social de las gitanas (2002). Ha publicado en Planeta sus novelas Polvo (2010), Persona normal (2011), Querido Escorpión (2013), Desde mi muro (2014), Cómplices (2015), Corazonadas (2016) y la trilogía Mundo sin dioses: Camino a Sognum (2018), La razón y la ira (2019), Caos y destino (2020), Pasar inadvertido (Seix Barral, 2022). Su libro más reciente es Cuatro veranos (Planeta, 2023). Su obra es un referente ineludible en el panorama literario contemporáneo. 

Other activities involving the participant:

Poetry Room
Latin America Viva