Coloribo,the New Way of Food-Art made in Apulia by Bice Perrini

COLORIBO — The new way of Food-Art by Bice Perrini

I am an artist from Bari (Italy) who has always been fond of colours. Transferring my art to food I have coined the term Coloribo (the short form of ‘colour and food’), an attempt to persuade the amateurs of good cuisine to paint with food and to create masterpieces.
Indeed, preparing creative and colourful recipes, I have created the Coloribo sauces, colours made of fresh fruits and vegetables. The sauces are white, orange, green, red, violet, yellow and blue as garlic, courgettes, carrots, cabbage, kiwi (or turnips), peppers and red beetroots are the ingredients used to make them.
It is by eating with eyes that we can feel the vibrations of the colours we find in nature. This is what I have tried to reinvent. Indeed, drawing on the traditional recipe of how to make the tomato sauce – which used to be the yearly gathering of Puglia families who used to fill the streets with the smell of boiled tomatoes – mixing together Mediterranean herbs (such as mint, sage and fennel) with local fresh fruits and vegetables, adding Puglia extra-virgin olive oil and almonds (which are natural thickeners), I have created these ‘colours’ to eat. Indeed,the claim off of my sauces is Eat coloribo as a spur, just like an artist, to use the brush and paint a piece of bread,transformed in this case into a canvas.
Coloribo is also multisensory. I truly believe that, not only are the goodness and the health of food important but also our mood while partaking of it. In other words, if it is true that we do not hunger for what’s good, but that we find good what we long for, then all our senses help us to enjoy the pleasure of food and its appetising aspect.
My theory is an attempt to give an alternative vision about the ongoing common needs of stress-relief and search for harmony and wellness through nutrition, stimulating all five senses at once: sight – by mixing together the colours of the ingredients that we choose; smell – by adding local herbs to meals; taste – by combining natural food with drinks; touch – by eating with hands; and hearing – by accompanying some soothing classical music.
According to my ‘multisensory food theory’, our lives can be positively affected by little emotional changes that tickle our ‘five senses’ and change our mood and the course of life itself.
Therefore, the main colour for a Monday meal can be white/blue and based on salad of fennel, white broccoli and cherry mozzarella as its content rich in B-vitamin and tryptophan which aid to fight the Monday feeling of melancholy and dullness, what we commonly know as 'the Monday Morning Blues'. As it is a midweek day, the Wednesday menu is characterised by orange – a warm colour symbolising energy, which is made of a mandarin, bergamot and marjoram and the soundtrack of this ‘lunch break’ can be a piano concert by Sergei Rachmaninoff.
Therefore, through Coloribo and the ‘multisensory food’, the richness of moods, colours and tastes aim at rethinking about ‘the food’, reassessing its concepts and retasting food as a whole through the visual, olfactory, aesthetic and the ecstatic. In one word, through the synaesthetic. Food becomes, therefore, a spiritual nourishment through the awakening of a joyful and creative sensitivity.
Starting from ‘art’ reaching ‘food’ coming to ‘Art and Multisensory Events’. Yes, because my sauces can be the base for a menu specific for thematic evenings.Last but not least, my chromatic and multisensory food theory is explained in my book “Coloribo: cibo multisensoriale e alimentazione cromatica”, recently published, so that I can leave a sign of an artistic — anthropological continuity about the concept of food considered as rite and ‘physical and spiritual wellness’.

Translated by Giusy Loglisci, PR & International Communications Specialist