Part of What the Food 2023
4-6 PM | Join the cohort members from Rewilding the Kitchen as they take us through their culinary research.
Join Nahla Tabbaa and the Rewilding The Kitchen participants Andrew Riad, Farah Nasrawi, The kōl project, Luchie Suguitan, Bhavika Bhatia, and Richi Bhatia for a tea party that invokes the colonial legacies of each participant's home, resurrecting it as a site for rewilding and-reimagining. Summer coolers by Salma Serry, Namliyeh, and Moza Al Matrooshi will also be presented.
The event is centred around and preempted by thinking of what it means to decolonise, unlearn, and/or (re)imagine both in the context of the programme and the Coptic Petits Fours tablescape supported by the presentation of Andrew’s research and archives. This is further cemented by Salma Serry’s historical and analytical research tracing the colonial legacy of French pastries and how they have–in a sense–been Egyptified.
Part of Alserkal Avenue’s What the Food festival, Nahla and Andrew will lead an informal walk around and dialogue of the Rewilding the Kitchen participants’ experiences and reflections thus far in the programme.
4PM on Saturday, 6 May at Alserkal Arts Foundation, Warehouse 51, Alserkal Avenue.
About Rewilding the Kitchen
Rewilding the Kitchen was launched in 2021 as a programme that explored the practices and world-views of four artists—Salma Serry (Sufra Kitchen), Moza Al Matrooshi, Aya Shaban (Namliyeh) and Manal Abu Shmais (Namliyeh)— through the lens of food.
Consisting of three recipes and texts featured on alserkal.online, complemented, off-line, by dishes that popped up at workshops and tastings at various events in Alserkal Avenue, the programme invited ingredients to tell their own authentic stories and explored how these artists allowed for that.
For the second and more expansive iteration, the impetus for a residency programme with tangible outcomes became evident as the culinary and art landscape continues to grow and produce new outcomes for research and practice.
Nahla Tabbaa is an artist whose practice explores tensions between the urban and the organic, the beautiful and the grotesque. Sensitive to the self-organising agency of materials, she adventures into the world of immateriality and the intangible through experiments in alchemy and combining elements from the organic and inorganic. Her methods are intentionally slow-paced, meditative and labour intensive and permeate strands of her everyday life to heal and harmonise her otherwise fast-paced life.
She earned her MA in Curatorial Practice from the Bath School of Art and Design (2012), and her BFA in Sculpture from Central Saint Martin’s College of Art and Design (2009). She previously led and developed the community programme at Sharjah Art Foundation, and has developed education projects independently and in collaboration with institutions including Art Jameel, Warehouse 421, and the Beacon House National Trust University. She was previously a culinary navigator and researcher at Frying Pan Adventures; is the co-founder of The Alchemy of Dyeing; Forsa School; a critical and professional programme for artists and Daftar Asfar; a sketchbook publishing collective. Her work has been presented at 421 (2022), Art Dubai (2021), the 8th cohort of the Salama Bint Hamdan Emerging Artists Fellowship (2021), Jameel Arts Centre Park Projects (2021) and is represented by Beyyn. In the culinary world she has led performance dinners and explorations at 421 in collaboration with Moza Almatrooshi, Al Serkal Avenue, Myocum and Amman Design Week, and has curated Sufra with Frying Pan Adventures and Rewilding the Kitchen with Alserkal Online. She has written for Alserkal Online and East East World.
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