‘Staple: What’s on your plate?’

This group exhibition investigates what we eat and the entanglement of food with memory, ecology and place, and considers our relationship with food as a starting point to explore a larger landscape of climate emergency.

Everyone eats. Food can unite, delight or disgust. Staple: What’s on your plate? invites you to explore some of the hidden stories of the food we consume everyday. The idea of a “staple” is infused in the ingredients that make up the works in the exhibition, including water, dates, rice, honey, sugar and chocolate, as well as in the essential elements inherent to cultivation and consumption of these items, such as labour, care, heritage, religion, migration, ecology and tradition.

“Staple: What’s on your plate?” is a vital question to ask today. The greatest impact humans have on our planet is through what we eat, and the urgent work of addressing the climate emergency relates directly to our diets. This exhibition shares some of the stories about where our food is coming from and why, and the social frameworks rooted in these relationships. We hope it is a way to think about the changes that need to be made to protect ours and the planet’s future.

The exhibition features a diverse group of international and Gulf-based artists working across various media, who together explore questions underlying what we eat, the histories entangled within, and the significant traces of our everyday choices. Together with an extended public programme that includes talks, performances, workshops, cooking sessions, tours, dinners and screenings, ‘Staple’ will host more than 30 artists, researchers, chefs, producers, performers, filmmakers and creative practitioners.

Participating artists include Leen Ajlan, Moza Almatrooshi, Bricklab x Misht Studio, CATPC (Cercle d’Art des Travailleurs de Plantation Congolaise), Cooking Sections, Annalee Davis, Mohammad Al Faraj, Asunción Molinos Gordo, Mariam Al Noaimi, Pratchaya Phinthong, Sancintya Mohini Simpson, Fatima Uzdenova, Munem Wasif and Lantian Xie with films by Jonathas de Andrade, Florence Lazar, Franziska Pierwoss, Salma Serry, Suha Shoman, Slavs and Tatars, Ute Wassermann, Zina Saro Wiwa, Lantian Xie and Raed Yassin.