In the Food for Thought tapes’ series, I have placed many cassettes in thirty-year-old bread-trays that I collected from old bakeries. These trays were used during the same period as these cassettes were being mass recorded and distributed.
- Maha Malluh

Born in 1959, Maha Malluh’s Food for Thought series has become an important part of her artistic practice, creating social commentary on a contemporary throwaway culture and the loss of traditions. These bread trays which once carried succulent breads now cradle recycled cassette tapes from the 1980s containing the recordings of religious sermons. It is a play with audio material to construct a visual-sensory framework, reassembling items once of great importance in popular customs. Just as these audiocassettes once united people, so do social gatherings brought together around food. The series speaks to the wider discourse on how ideas can penetrate societies and become norms, permeating and transgressing local borders into the global sphere.

A work from Malluh’s Food for Thought series was exhibited at the 57th Venice Biennale, 2017 as part of the international pavilion Viva Arte Viva, curated by Christine Macel. Versions have been acquired by museum collections including the Centre Pompidou, Paris; SF MoMA, San Francisco and the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi.