La Cantina de la Touriste is a permanent installation by the artist Sol Calero that reimagines the interior of Kafé Mat & prat. The installation was part of the fourth edition of Bergen Assembly in 2022, Yasmine and the Seven Faces of the Heptahedron. 

You can experience La Cantina de la Touriste at Kafe Mat & prat and try their tasty and affordable lunch menu with healthy dishes from all over the world.
Open for lunch Monday to Friday, 10:00 - 15:00.

Calero's La Cantina de la Touriste has given the institutional-looking café at Engensenteret a new, welcoming and colorful atmosphere. The new canteen paves way for social exchange and new connections.

Mat & prat is an education and work training program run by Ny Sjanse (Bergen municipality). The participants come from many different countries, and they therefore bring with them knowledge of different food cultures which is reflected in the rotating menu. Calero’s extensive redesign, created in close conversation with Kafé Mat & prat’s community, invigorates an existing project with meaningful social benefits, allowing visitors and participants to become, momentarily, tourists in their own city. With a bright, tiled wall mural, hand-painted furniture, and room dividers that recall somewhere south of Norway, Calero’s imagery reflects her interest in tropical aesthetics as well as those of applied design, and determinations of the self-consciously “exotic.”

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                  Artist Biography

    Sol Calero creates site-specific installations that work as spaces for gathering. She often uses opulent three-dimensional tableaus, and has staged situations as far-ranging as a school, spa, and currency-exchange office. Calero’s works are at once vibrant, bright, and playful, while also examining the political overtones of themes such as cultural representation, national identity, exoticism, and marginalisation.

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