General direction, Text and Acting: Laia Ribera Cañénguez
Dramaturgy and Co-stage Direction: Antonio Cerezo
Live Music: Yahima Piedra Córdova
In her strikingly multimedia performance, Laia Ribera Cañénguez asks a question that lingers long after the scent of roasted beans fades: “How does it feel to have your worth determined by where you come from?” While she directs this toward a handful of coffee, the weight of the inquiry lands squarely on the audience.
The brilliance of the production lies in its tone. Cañénguez invites us in for a coffee—a gesture that feels intimate rather than combative. Yet, this hospitality is a Trojan horse; it lowers our guard before the piece opens outward, tracing the invisible threads connecting Western consumption to global structures of oppression. The journey is anchored by a phrase printed on a coffee pack: “Place of origin: not Europe.” This begins an exploration of identity, following the artist’s upbringing between the German School in San Salvador and her life in Germany.
Cañénguez masterfully balances the heavy and the light. She shares personal anecdotes, only to anchor them against the weight of the archives. These lighthearted memories are cleverly juxtaposed with brutal historical recordings, creating a jarring through-line. We see a woman othered in her own land, told through a lens that moves seamlessly from conversational intimacy to the cold evidence of the systems that benefit from her displacement.
The visual language is stunning. Cañénguez uses raw materials—thousands of coffee beans and spun sugar—to physicalise the internalised dynamics of colonial power. The beans are treated with a haunting duality: caressed and placed with meticulous care, then suddenly scattered and spun in moments of chaos. In the show’s most arresting sequence, flying candyfloss coats Cañénguez’s face. She builds a mask out of the sticky sweetness, performing as the other in a dance that grows increasingly frantic until she plunges her head into a tank of water.
The mask melts instantly, but any sense of easy resolution is shattered by a final, blood-curdling scream. This jarring conclusion reminds us that some wounds cannot be washed away. The scream articulates everything that remains unsaid—the frustration, the conflict, and the open question of global injustice. It leaves us with the haunting realisation that while the mask may be gone, the struggle continues.
Reviewed on 5 February 2026 | Image: Contributed
