Mouneh: Pantry Work

Mouneh: Pantry Work, is an art installation, which came together after 3 years of extensive research, experimentation and production at Ujazdowski Castle for Contemporary Art in Warsaw.

The project looks at the pantry space Mouneh,  the backbone of the house, whether a simple shelf or an entire cupboard, the pantry perseveres through time. From keeping grains to legumes to spices, and jars of ferments to dried fruits and vegetables. Mothers held their families together for centuries, nurtured through seasons and scarcity, from the pantry space.

for the Installation, I took the disappearing space of the pantry room, and constructed it at the museum with ferments dating from 2019 and 2020 and others freshly made before the show, encapsulating vegetal lives and microbiomes that draw us strongly to look inside the walls of those glass jars. Turning the pantry space into a cabinet of curiosities that takes the audience into a visual and sensual experience through 70 jars of ferments, playfully interacting with different interventions of objects. 

In addition to the pantry installation, the piece encompasses the Fermentation Station kitchen lab which eventually ended a pantry art installation, six booklets with unique

recipes weaved into autobiographical stories, and To Jar, a short film that looks at times of global distress, preservation, rituals of self-protection.

This work was commissioned by Ujazdowski Castle for Contemporary Arts, and was on display at Everyday Form of Resistance exhibition that took place Ujazdowski Castle for Contemporary Arts 7- 11/2021.