The Empty Seat at the Table, reflections on the work of Palestine Hosting Society.

This lecture-performance weaves together storytelling, archival research, and acts of radical hospitality.

Emerging from Mirna Bamieh's long-term projects Palestine Hosting Society and Sour Things, it reflects on food as a site of disappearance and endurance. Speaking from a place of distance, Bamieh revisits her first and last research trips in Palestine before the war, tracing how recipes, lands, and gestures vanish under occupation yet persist through memory and care. The performance blends live narration, projected images, sound fragments, and moments of collective food sharing. Absence becomes a site of inspection with the host who cannot be present. Through this constellation of storytelling and sensory experience, Bamieh invites audiences to consider how cooking, preserving, and remembering can open a space for mourning, resilience, and the imagination of a different future.
There will be a simple tray with print bread, Gazan Dukka, olive oil, Freshly made Labneh and Olives, will be shared as an offering to end the lecture performance with.

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Bio
Mirna Bamieh explores the politics of disappearance and memory production by unpacking the social concerns and limitations of Palestinian communities amid contemporary political dilemmas. With degrees in Visual arts, culinary arts and Psychology/Sociology, she melds food and storytelling to develop socially engaged work through Palestine Hosting Society, a live art project she founded in 2018. Staging dinner performances and various interventions that draw from food practices as well as the passage of recipes through generations, the project aims to revitalize traditional Palestinian food cultures on the verge of disappearing.

Starting 2019, with a need to look at personal history in relation to the collective, the artist has also been reflecting on the process of fermentation through text, sound, ceramics, drawings and video works incorporated into site-specific interactive installations. Her current installations project around fermentation is the series of Sour Things.

Bamieh has performed and exhibited her work at several distinguished venues such Tate Modern, Kunsthaus Zurich, Sharjah Biennial, Aichi triennial, MoMAPS1, Tanzquartier, TBA21 among others.
Has been featured in major media outlets such as Frieze magazine, Mousse, Umbigo, New York Times, Hyperallergic, Art Monthly, AD Middle East, Conde Nast, Canvas, Contemporânia, The National, among others.
She received several awards such as A.M Qattan Foundation’s Artist of the year award 2013 , Josi Guggenheim Foundation award 2022, and was a finalist for Creativity for social change award with Moleskin Foundation in 2026.
Her works are in several private and public collections such as Guggenheim Foundation, Sharjah Foundation, Kunsthaus Zurich and Thyssen-Bornemisza collection, Institut du Monde Arabe and Kadist.

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The event is free. No registration is needed.