A Conversation with Tunde Wey

People assume I’ve interviewed Tunde Wey—the artist, writer, and cook whose work has been the subject of other people’s award-winning profiles—before because I’m a big public fan of his work, but I hadn’t felt myself properly prepared. His work touches on everything from racism to immigration to colonialism to capitalist extraction, and I didn’t really know my way into a focused interview. I was nervous, basically. But I think we had a good conversation, one that gets at a lot of issues with food as a lens toward bigger systems and problems.
In many cases—most cases, if I’m honest—I’m doing an interview in order to work out a problem I’ve been thinking about, and this one was no different. We waded into whether food can really be an agent of change in a capitalist world, because I’ve been wavering on that idea myself, and Wey has the economic knowledge to discuss why it isn’t so in depth. Listen above, or read below.
Alicia: Hi, Tunde. Thank you so much for taking the time.
Tunde: Thank you.
(:07) Alicia: And I know you are in Lagos, now. Can you tell us about how that's going, what you're doing there?
Tunde: Oh, I'm actually not in Lagos. [Laughs.] I was supposed to fly two weeks ago, and my COVID result didn’t come in time. So I just pushed for my flight till a couple of months from now. Next month or something.
Alicia: Ok, cool.
Well, can you tell us about where you grew up and what you ate?
Tunde: Yeah.
I grew up in Lagos. I ate regional Western Nigerian food, I guess. So I'm Yoruba, so I ate Yoruba food. My mom is Edo, so I ate that food as well. My dad is also part Efik, so I ate that as well. So I'd Yoruba, Efik, and sort of the Delta region food, so Edo, Itsekiri food. And then we ate, I guess, white food too.
Alicia: Which white food?
Tunde: When we were growing up, we used to call it breakfast things. But when I came here, then it was lunch meats and s**t like that. So sausages and hams and stuff like that. So, we ate that. So it was a mix.
We usually would eat that on Sundays. My dad would cook, and we'd go out to this store. My data would buy a whole bunch of things, and then he'll cook. Pasta. My mom would mix s**t like beef stroganoff, just random s**t. She went to school in England, so she came back with certain notions around food. So, we have those kinds of things.
And growing up in Nigeria, I came from a middle-class background. It wasn't out of the norm for folks to eat that kind of stuff. So cereals and pancakes, stuff like that. Plus, we also watched a lot of American television with that kind of stuff on the TV.
Alicia: Right, right. Yeah.
And you self-identify as an artist, a cook and a writer. And I wanted to ask, which were you first and how did the rest come? [Laughter.]
Tunde: Which was up first? [Laughs.]
Alicia: Yeah, yeah. Which identity? Or which came to you first, in terms of your work?
Tunde: Right.
I don't know how to answer that question. I feel like it just depends on who I'm, who I am talking to. I think I say I'm an artist because it's just easier to convey what I'm trying to do. I remember, I was trying to raise money for a restaurant. And I was telling people that this restaurant is not going to make any money. And they couldn't understand that. They were like, ‘Huh, what does this mean?’ But then if I was talking to, say, a curator, and I'm like, ‘Well, this project is this and I need this amount of money,’ then they get it. So it just depends on who I'm talking to.
So I guess in the chronology of what is on public records? Artist came last, and it's probably still not on record. So, maybe that’s the first time.
Alicia: Well, it is difficult, I think, for multi-disciplinary people to use that word, to make themselves legible, I suppose, in a world where you have to make everything legible to obtain what you need to do your work at all. You have to be very, very strict about what you are. That is really funny that saying artist allowed you to get the capital for the projects that you needed, that you wanted to do. [Laughs.]
Tunde: Yeah, I have a friend who's a curator. She's a friend, but she's also a colleague. She's based in Pittsburgh, Chenoa, and she was the first person—I did a dinner in New Orleans, and she happened to be there ’cause she was there for the opening of some hotel or something. And she had read about it. She just came through. And then, that's how we became friends. But she saw it as art. And then she gave me sort of the words to be able to describe myself to myself and to other people. And then she sponsored the project as art. So I'm like, ‘All right, I f**k with this.’
Alicia: Right.
And your work focuses on power, colonialism, capitalism, racism. You've written for food sections and food outlets...