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.
Now as they develop new projects, they continue to challenge the role of the audience by inviting them into their process. Continuing this exploration they produced their exhibition Progressive Diasporas, to In The Parks Series, on the way to being full., and other projects that invites everyone to be a bit more mindful, present, and experience the poetry that is in front of all.
the artists
Photo by Michael Piazza, Edible Boston
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Ricky Orng is a New England-based artist and designer exploring care and ephemera through modes of food, poetry, storytelling, design, and community gathering. He is the eldest child to refugees who emigrated as part of the Cambodian diaspora during the Khmer Rouge. He is ½ of Adobo-Fish-Sauce, the artist duo bringing the kitchen to the stage combining food and spoken word poetry.
Ricky organizes the Untitled Open Mic, a twice-a-month poetry event in Lowell, Massachusetts, and co-directs the Lowell Poetry Wheel. He was formerly the Program Lead of an AAPI open mic in Cambridge known as East Meets Words and has coached youth poetry teams that performed on final stages in Massachusetts Louder Than A Bomb and Brave New Voices.
In 2019, Ricky was artist-in-residence for the National Teen Convening at the Institute of Contemporary Arts Boston and the Run of the Mills Residency at Boston Center For The Arts. In 2020, he was selected as part of the Radical Imagination for Racial Justice artist cohort and was a grant recipient for NEFA Public Art for Spatial Justice.
Ricky spends most of his time hosting pop-up events, yapping with community in his one-on-one Coffee Breaks, scrolling through his favorite social media Facebook Marketplace, and caring for his three pups.
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Anthony Febo is a spoken-word poet, teaching artist, and new dad living in East Providence, RI. He uses vulnerability and joy to reflect, challenge, and celebrate his experience in Puerto Rican and Latine culture. He is a co-founder of the Lowell based poetry organization FreeVerse! and has toured the country individually and as half of Adobo-Fish-Sauce: a cooking and poetry collaboration. He has competed on numerous slam teams at the National Poetry Slam, and has coached even more youth teams at the international Brave New Voices and Massachusetts Louder Than A Bomb Poetry Festivals.
Through Adobo-Fish-Sauce, he was a recipient of the MassART and City of Boston’s Radical Imagination for Racial Justice Grant, the New England Foundation for the Arts Public Art for Spatial Justice Grant, and The Boston Foundation’s Live Arts Boston Grant. They’ve been awarded residencies at the Boston Center for the Arts, the National Teen Arts Convening at the ICA Boston, and the Strange Foundation in New York's Catskill Mountains.
A teaching artist for over 15 years, Febo was one of the teaching artist chosen to develop a week long professional development with Italian educators at the Venice Biennale teaching the pedagogy used in the ICA’s Wall Talk program. In 23'-24' school year, he was the first ever poet in residence at his old stomping grounds, Lowell High School. There, he performed and ran workshops with every single English class in every single grade, reaching approximately over 3,000 students.
Febo was also one of the co-organizers for the Write Here | Write Now | Speak Loud! Teen Spoken Word Festival, which brought teens from across Massachusetts for a three-day festival to participate in workshops, open mics, and poetry slams. His first book of poems, "Becoming an Island" published by Game Over Books, is a practice in actively choosing joy in the face of what is trying to break you.
ExhibitionS + Projects
2024 - In The Kitchen We Gather: From Soil to Soul
Part of Plaza Sábados, In partnership with Emily Rose and El Salon, Worcester, MA2023 - on the way to being full.
Upstairs at Bow, Somerville, MA
Live Arts Boston Grant by The Boston Foundation2022 - Progressive Diasporas
EFA Project Space Residency Project at Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts, New York, NY
curated by Sheetal Prajapati and Anna Harsany2022 - New Narratives: Our Past and Present
In collaboration with Greenway Conservancy and Pao Arts Center, Chinatown, Boston, MA
curated by Leslie Anne Condon2022 - In The Park Series
Supported in part by Radical Imagination for Racial Justice and NEFA - Public Art for Spatial Justice, Boston MA2019 - House Warming Series
As part of Run of the Mills residency, Boston, MA
WorkshopS + Performances
2025 - FIREsidechatCIDER w/ night cap cafe, Somerville, MA
2025 - Lawrence Student Writers Workshop and Workshop for Educators, Andover Bread Loaf
2025 - Memorial Day Open House, Museum of Fine Arts Boston
2025 - Feature Performance, The Jar, Rockwell Theatre, Somerville, MA
2024 - Headliner, Nossrat Yassini Poetry Festival, Durham, NH
2023 - Feature, Liberation Open Mic Anniversary, Boston Liberation Center, Roxbury, MA
2022 - Opening Performance, “On This Ground: Being and Belonging in America,” Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA
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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
2024 - Live Arts Boston Grant by The Boston Foundation
2020 - NEFA - Public Art for Spatial Justice