MOFAD — Street vending exhibition

Mattmo — Tue, 13 Jan 2026 14:42:48 +0000

Mattmo was part of the concept team for Street Food City, a major exhibition by the Museum of Food and Drink (MOFAD) in New York. The exhibition explores how immigrant street food vendors have shaped New York City’s culinary identity, public space, and everyday culture — from historic pushcarts to contemporary food trucks, and from informal economies to political activism.

Street Food City reveals the often unseen world behind the cart: stories of migration, family businesses, night shifts, regulation, and resilience. It positions street vending not only as food culture, but as a lens through which to understand urban life, labor, and belonging.

In close dialogue with MOFAD’s curatorial team, Mattmo contributed to the early conceptual framework of the exhibition. Our focus was on how storytelling, multimedia, and sensory design could translate lived experience into a museum context — creating an exhibition that feels human, layered, and immersive rather than purely informational.

We helped explore narrative approaches that prioritize voices over facts, intimacy over spectacle, and reflection over explanation. Concepts included audio-driven storytelling, video portraits from the vendor’s point of view, interactive city mapping, and participatory elements that invite visitors to connect their own food memories to the broader story of street vending. Sensory layers — sound, image, smell, and taste — were considered as key tools to evoke the rhythm, density, and poetry of the street.

A central theme in our contribution was extending the exhibition beyond the museum walls: imagining street carts as communication platforms, digital tools that connect the exhibition to the city, and participatory formats that allow the public to engage with street food culture in real urban space.

Through this work, Mattmo supported MOFAD’s mission to present food as culture — highlighting street vendors as cultural agents who continuously shape the city, its flavors, and its social fabric.

Het bericht MOFAD — Street vending exhibition verscheen eerst op Mattmo Creative - Amsterdam.

Street food exhibition New York

Mattmo — Mon, 08 Sep 2025 09:00:51 +0000

We zijn vereerd om deel te nemen als lid van het concept team voor de aanstaande tentoonstelling in het Museum of Food and Drink (MOFAD) in New York City, die street food en de diepgaande verbanden tussen eten en identiteit onderzoekt.

De tentoonstelling viert de kleinste foodbedrijven van de stad, onthult de verborgen wereld achter de iconische NYC foodcart, erkent hoe street food handelaren en de gerechten die zij aanbieden de voedselcultuur van de stad hebben gevormd, en volgt de uitdagingen waarmee ze van vroeger tot het huidige gevecht voor verkopersrechten te maken hebben gehad. De expositie opent in het najaar.

Dit project valt binnen Mattmo’s ‘Lab’—ons onderzoeksgerichte platform waar we culturele, sociale en ontwerpgerelateerde vragen onderzoeken, diepgaande studies uitvoeren en experimenteren met innovatieve benaderingen om betekenisvolle, op bewijs gebaseerde inzichten te creëren. https://mattmo.nl/nl/lab

Het bericht Street food exhibition New York verscheen eerst op Mattmo Creative - Amsterdam.

MoFaD – Mattmo Creative – Amsterdam

MOFAD — Street vending exhibition

Street food exhibition New York