Ekel (WorkInProgress)

My Middle Eastern heritage is defined by the tunes and the food; music is taught with more intent to males, while an education in cooking is directed towards the females. In an attempt to find a way of channeling my most prominent Jewish Egyptian cultural association I've sculpted glass food. Inedible, high gloss, and overly rich in color these small glass sculptures of iconic Syrian and Egyptian foodstuffs. These small sculptures lend the food an odd permanence, a nostalgic relic of a culture that is fading and assimilating. My choice to create foods that are frozen or dried speak of the distance between me and the original recipes, each food stuff is mediated by American/Brooklyn production. 

These works play with ideas of petrified and commodified culture, nostalgia, identity performance, and feminism. The projects acts as both criticism and fond memory. While the memory of 'Arab Jews' will continue to erode, the glossy sculptures and romanticized imagery will retain some the culture’s flavor. 

I used the term 'ekel', meaning food, tag to navigate to posts that are associated with this project. 

Further Notes/Proposed Foods:
Dried Apricots in glass
Shrab El Loz - almond milk - cup and glass almonds
Frozen Mulukhia and Frozen Okra - kiln cast glass
Frozen Kibbe Hamda - ground rice in meatballs -flameworked, yellow butcher foam and shrink wrapping
Arak - anise liquor - clear bottle - blow glass, cold worked + enamel label