Manar AlSabeel (from the series "Food for Thought")

In this installation, bread trays which would have once cradled scrumptious bread, are instead carrying recycled cassettes. Maha Malluh strongly believes that food is one of those things that brings people together and often builds the conceptual approach to her material and practice around this thought.

The tapes in question are interspersed coloured cassette tapes dating from the 1980’s containing recordings of religious sermons preaching a rigid interpretation of Islam. Malluh essentially plays with audio material to construct a visual-sensory framework in this series. To her, it is through listening to these audiocassettes that people once used to unite in her country, the same way they for instance gathered in social events involving food.

The Food for Thought tapes series poke at how social transformation has occurred as a result of the wide-spread distribution of certain cassettes, promoting a whole new paradigm of thought and a different way of life. Reassembling items that were once of great importance in popular customs — like cassette tapes of religious lectures and enameled dishes that were part of the region’s nomadic food tradition — Malluh creates a social commentary on contemporary throwaway culture and the loss of traditions.

The work speaks to the wider discourse on how ideas can penetrate into societies and become norms. It is about the fluidity of discourses that can permeate and transgress local borders, circulating into the global sphere.

Malluh’s tape series have become an important part of her practice. Exhibited at the 57th Venice Biennale as part of the international pavilion Viva Arte Viva, curated by Christine Macel, several museums have also acquired them for their collections in recent years such The Centre Pompidou, Paris, the SF MoMA, San Francisco and the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi to name a few.