Zuri Camille De Souza Is First Chef-in-Residence at Villa Medici in Rome

Zuri Camille De Souza, a Mumbai-born chef with a background in graphic design and human ecology, has been selected as the first gastronomic resident at Villa Medici in Rome, starting January 2022 for a one-year residency. The historic villa, home to the French Academy in Rome since the early 19th century, is expanding its artist residency program to include culinary research. De Souza, who previously ran Sanna Marseille, a delivery-only Indian regional cuisine lab in Marseille, will coordinate the villa's internal cafeteria, develop menus, and conduct research on edible flowers, citrus, and aromatic plants in the villa's 16th-century gardens. On June 25, 2022, during the Nuit des Cabanes festival, the gardens will open to the public for free, featuring artistic, musical, and gastronomic programming organized by De Souza. Her residency aims to activate relationships between the academy and Rome, building on her activist work in Lesbos, Greece, where she created a community garden for Syrian refugees in 2018. She has also collaborated with Rome-based research center IUNO, activating ceramics by artist Chiara Camoni in a dinner-performance. De Souza hopes to establish a network for future chef residents and open the villa to the city.