Coffee Compass

Coffee Compass is a ceiling relief developed for the independent tasting format Kaffeeverkostung Hamburg, founded by Annette Simbolon. For more than a decade, the initiative has explored coffee not only as a product of taste but as a complex cultural and economic process — tracing the journey from the coffee plant to the cup within a wider historical and postcolonial context.

The spatial artwork translates this narrative into a visual orientation system structured like a compass. At its centre lies the coffee plant itself, surrounded by five thematic directions that reflect different stages of the coffee cycle: cultivation, trade, refinement through roasting, preparation, and consumption. Each aspect is represented through a series of drawings that together form a total of twenty-four images — eight in the centre focusing on the plant and its mythology, and four illustrations for each of the surrounding stages.

All drawings were created by hand by Javi Acevedo, digitally refined, and CNC-milled into MDF panels before being finished with a monochrome white lacquer surface. Installed as a ceiling relief within the tasting space, the work functions both as an educational tool and as an atmospheric element, framing the weekly gatherings beneath it. Rather than presenting a didactic timeline, the compass invites visitors to reflect on the layered histories embedded in everyday rituals of consumption, connecting sensory experience with broader questions of trade, power, and cultural exchange.