Adobo-Fish-Sauce
A Puerto Rican and a Cambodian walk into a kitchen. The kitchen is your heart. The food is made with food. The food is sometimes poems. Either way you are fed.
Adobo-Fish-Sauce is an active choice to celebrate in the face of bitterness. It is responding to “Go back to where you come from!” by bringing where they are from right to you. The duo fuses spoken word, cooking, intentionality, vulnerability, and joy to create a one of a kind experience that can’t be found in any kitchen or open mic.
“One of the highlights was seeing Adobo-Fish-Sauce perform and the way they used words, food, and storytelling to convey really personal and intimate narratives as a way to teach and engage young people, was unexpected, deeply exciting, and gratifying to hear and be apart of.”
- Jeary Payne- Teen Educator at The Met Museum, NY
Their journey
Adobo-Fish-Sauce began as an artist project fusing live cooking and spoken word poetry performances as means to invite the audience into an enhanced storytelling experience. Their first project was an interactive multicultural and multi-sensory show that toured the East Coast and Midwest in 2017-2018 and was retired at a final performance during their Performing Arts Residency at the Run of the Mills Gallery in February 2018.
In preparation for the residency and as a way to transition towards more than just a performance, AFS created a new approach to gathering and dialogue with guests, through their Housewarming series. They invited their audience to be active creators in the experience of the night by engaging them in activities and conversations over dinner, cooked by AFS.
Adobo-Fish-Sauce continued to engage their audience in more intimate settings with their artist residency at the 2019 ICA Teen Convening. There, they where able to flex their facilitator and youth worker muscle. Pulling from their experience in art education, they cultivated an environment of vulnerability through storytelling for teens and educators from 7 different museums. The duo lead the cohort in conversations and activities centered in identifying their authentic selves.
They closed out the Fall with a retreat in the Catskills of New York. The Strange Foundation's Decelerator Program gave Ricky and Febo a moment to breathe, reflect on where they have been, and breathe. Now as they develop new projects, they continue to challenge the role of the audience by inviting them into their process.
the artists
Febo
Anthony Febo is a Puerto Rican poet, teaching artist, and new dad living in Arlington, MA. Febo has been performing and teaching poetry and theatre for over a decade in the greater Boston area. His ability and love of remixing different forms got him featured as part of WBUR's The ARTery 25. In the classroom, Febo treats each workshop as it's own celebration. He draws on his experiences in theatre spaces, museums, non-profits, and art centers. On the stage, he's toured the country individually and as half of Adobo-Fish-Sauce: a cooking and poetry collaboration. His work examines what it means to actively choose joy in the face of what is trying to break you. Weaving performance into his writing, he examines issues such as toxic masculinity, family, culture, identity, and the role representation plays into a person’s development. His first full length book of poetry, Becoming an Island, can be purchased at Game Over Books.
Ricky
Ricky Orng is a Cambodian-American organizer, designer and storyteller. He has worked extensively with youth organizations on contemporary arts and social justice projects using mediums such as photography, film, and poetry. He has coached the youth poetry slam team, FreeVerse!, to final stages at Louder Than the Bomb Massachusetts and showcased at Brave New Voices. He currently organizes one of the cutest poetry venues in the Northeast, the bi-monthly Untitled Open Mic in Lowell, MA; and also was the organizer of one of the longest running Asian American Pacific Islander open mics in the country, East Meets Words. All of Ricky's poetry is about love and relationships and his relationships with his loves.
Exhibition + Performances
2022 - Cooking Demonstration & Performance for We Give Summit Conference, Philanthropy Together
2021 - In The Park Series, Greater Boston Area
2021 - Lowell High School, Lowell, MA
2021 - Poetry Soup, Newburyport, MA
2021 - Untitled Open Mic, Lowell, MA
2021 - Merrimack College, North Andover, MA
2021 - Bread & Roses Festival, Lawrence, MA
2021 - Boston Collegiate Charter School, Dorchester, MA
2021 - deCordova Sculpture Park, Lincoln, MA
2021 - (Virtual) Feature at Newburyport’s Poetry Soup
2020 - (Virtual) Performance at Boston’s Center for the Arts - Self Care Sunday
2020 - (Virtual) Workshop & Performance at Merrimack College, Andover, MA
2020 - (Virtual) Performance at Bread & Roses Festival, Lawrence, MA
2020 - El Taller Presents Adobo-Fish-Sauce, Lawrence, MA
2019 - Simmons College, Boston, MA
2019 - The University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN
2019 - Friends Weekend, Brooklyn, New York
2019 - Art that Defies Categorization, Run of the Mills Gallery, Boston Center for the Arts
2018 - Christopher Newport University, Newport News, VA
2018 - Florida Southern University, Lakeland, FL
2017 - Feature at ProvSlam, AS220, Providence, Rhode Island
2017 - Smith College, North Hampton, MA
2017 - Sweety's Presents Adobo-Fish-Sauce, New York
2017 - Feature at First Draft Open Mic, Urbanword NYC, New York
2017 - Sweety's Presents Adobo-Fish-Sauce, New York
2017 - University of Pittsburg at Bradford, PA
2017 - Lubeznik Center of the Arts, Michigan City, IN
2017 - Augustana College, Little Rock, IL
2017 - EMW Presents Adobo-FIsh-Sauce, Cambridge, MA
2017 - Feature at Dirty Gerund Poetry Show, Worcester, MA
2017 - Feature at First Friday's Open Mic, Jamaica Plain, MA
Residencies
2019 - Decelerator Program, The Strange Residency, Shokan, NY
2019 - National Teen Convening Artist in Residence, Institute of Contemporary Arts Boston
2019 - Run of the Mills Residency, Boston Center For The Arts
Grant Recipients
2020 - NEFA - Public Art for Spatial Justice