
The Humble Leaf as Cushion and Vessel
Saturday 27 July 2024, 12-2pm Toronto / 9-11am Vancouver / 7-9pm Amman / 9:30-11:30pm Delhi
As part of Ishtar’s International Network of Feral Gardens.
The Humble Leaf as Cushion and Vessel Recipes
Artists Basil AlZeri and Nahla Tabbaa of Orraisse (قريص) invite you to a culinary conversation and making session that unpacks their latest research and explorations around ‘invasive/unwanted weeds’ and seasonal plants carpeting rural and urban areas of Amman, Jordan, and West Asia. By rolling vine leaves together, an activity that embodies love and collective labour, Basil and Nahla will consider the humble leaf as a cushion and vessel. They will discuss challenges and opportunities around meaningful culinary performances and sacred ecology against the backdrop of grief, catastrophe, and famine currently engulfing their region. You are encouraged to bring a leaf and grain to roll during the event, and share your own recipes involving leaves from around the world.
Accessibility: Closed captions, transcript, and chat enabled in zoom.
Artists Biographies
Orraisse (قريص) is a collaborative food lab run by visual artists Basil AlZeri and Nahla Tabbaa. Together, they explore seasonal and native plants, from the spectrum of the medicinal to the unwanted invasive weeds. They produce recipes,culinary performances, intimate dinners and tablescapes that invite guests to rethink their palettes, by developing meaningful relationships with resourcefulness and locality.
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Basil AlZeri is a cross-disciplinary visual artist and educator living between Toronto, Canada, and Amman, Jordan. AlZeri’s work is rooted in the ongoing fascination with how we spend our time (living), from the moment we wake up to the late hours of the night and while we sleep. Through his exploratory approach, he thinks and makes through the intersection of art, education, and food, utilizing a range of mediums including performance, drawing, video, and ephemeral installations.
Nahla Tabbaa (b. 1986, Jordan) is a Jordanian-Bangladeshi artist whose practice explores tensions between the urban and the natural, 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. Her practices explore mediums such as gestural drawing, ceramics, alchemy, research and culinary performances.