Mirna Bamieh on rescuing and remembering Palestinian recipes

I was looking to how time, history, politics was affecting what we put on our plate as Palestinians.

There is a lot of richness and knowledge that didn't make it to the present moment.

There were names of dishes that I didn't know about, certain ingredients that were really hard to get to and I was asking questions.

I wanted to understand what led those recipes to withdraw?

What changed in the present moment that certain produce and certain ingredients are inaccessible to us?

How does the constant configuration of the map of Palestine affect how we write our culinary history?

My name is Mirna Bamieh. I'm an artist from Jerusalem, I'm currently based between Lisbon and Palestine.

My work is usually creating spaces, installations, tables, performances.

I usually work around notions of disappearance and memory.

We're adding anise, sesame, a bit of cumin and nejila seed

In Arabic we call it the seed of blessing:

حبة البركة

There is a lot of history embedded in the recipes

It's not just a mode of cooking

When we cook, we tell a story

The recipe is a story carrier

I try to find recipes that are on the verge of disappearance, on the verge of withdrawal and for me, that is a wide concept

It doesn't mean that a dish is there and is no longer there anymore

It means that we have no accessibility to it

Whether and when we're talking about Palestine we're talking about literal islands where people have no access, ability to move freely from one point to the other.

So for me, as a Jerusalemite, not being able to access the kitchen in Gaza, that is disappearance

With Palestine hosting society I was addressing the history, the geography the changes that are happening, in the map but as well in the way we relate to identity, in the way we relate to the present moment as Palestinians and as resisting bodies.

And that's when I started doing the research and that research was with the people in the houses, cooking with them, going to different cities and villages, meeting historians, trying to understand, why are we losing that knowledge?

Why are those dishes being cooked less and less with time?

When my mother was learning how to cook she would always call my grandma on the phone.

My mum is Lebanese and my grandma was living in Beirut so that call was precious and it was to try to learn and replicate the taste that connects her to her family so she can pass it to her new family, to us

But as well, I remember those moments when my grandma used to visit us at that moment to 1988 they were able to come to Palestine which is impossible now and for my grandma the first thing that she would do is go to the kitchen and start making Maamoul, the semolina cookies, but as well, cooking all of those complicated recipes that my mum at that time didn't master yet

So the house would always be filled with all those smells

And I think that's why in my research, I try to go to grandma's kitchens as much as possible

It's a safe space

It's a space of tenderness

It's a space of containment

But as well, it's a space of great knowledges, of things that somehow history and books failed to document and it's a pity to lose that

It's one way of us narrating our identity for ourselves and the others through tenderness

What I love about fermentation is that you're constantly working with the unknown

With the invisible

You're a host for unseen cultures

All you can do is create a safe environment for that transformation to to happen

What I love about fermentation it's all about the future

Memory for me is stretched, so stretched across days and months and years and that what preservation gives us

All preservation practices came from a moment where there was less control over the future

You needed somehow to make your present moment stronger

I'm working on a series of okras, porcelain okras and Bamieh literally means okra

I like this piece

And it has a verse of a poem

It says, in Arabic

و المهاجرون مثلي لا يأكلون ليشبعو

بل ليستعيدو

"Immigrants like me do not eat to get food, but to remember"

What makes it exciting for me to work with this slow pace, hand building with coils and slabs is that I can listen to the vessels more and have them lead me to the directions they want to go

I wanted to not only make food but as well create vessels , the containers of the food

For me vessels and ceramics are like stories, they hold, they contain

When I'm working on those vessels, especially on those vessels, I feel there's an aspect of surrender that I have to practice and I love it because I struggle doing that in other areas in my life

So there's this kind of creating a connection from the kitchen basically to the different tables that I'm creating all over the world