Opening Hours - Sellerie Weekend

May 1-3, 14:00 - 17:00

From May 4 onwards, visits by appointment via DM

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Upcoming Program

A series of gatherings on food, sound, literature, and discussion will take place throughout the month.

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The smell of fenugreek transports me to Friday mornings in Cairo, when my father cooked bastirma and eggs. Only later did I realize that this staple dish was brought in by Armenians, carrying a shared history and our collective memories. Developed during the Cross-Looking Residency in Yerevan, What Remains at the Table examines traditional food practices as counter-gestures to capitalist efficiency, preserving generational knowledge in a world where convenience erodes memory.

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Curated by

Sarah Hachem and Mohamed AbouGabal

Najla Said’s analog photographs stain, evolve, and fade over time; much like memories do.

During the CROSS-LOOKING residency in Yerevan, Najla Said examined Armenian food preservation methods after discovering the Armenian origins of bastirma, a dish central to her Cairo upbringing. This research traces food practices to migration, displacement and survival histories. What Remains at the Table investigates how recipes carry histories, not by remaining unchanged, but by adapting. Is adaptation a form of loss, or a means by which the past persists, altered? If the recipe changes, does the memory change with it? Or does memory reside in the act of adaptation, in what is repeated, reworked, and passed on? And when encountering a dish shaped by histories we did not witness, what memory are we engaging?

In Najla Said’s practice, the kitchen and creative workspace become parallel both employing time, chemistry, and environmental factors transform and preserve. Her cyanotypes, chlorophyll prints and cyanolumens echo organic matter, staining, fading, and remaining sensitive to light. These works resist the permanence of traditional photographic objects, raising similar questions: Do images persist through transformation, or does their meaning change as they adapt? Can an image exist as a living entity, subject to change and renewal, much like the recipes that inspired.

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About the Artist

Najla Said (b. 1999, Cairo) is an Egyptian visual artist working with photography, text, video, food, and editorial design. Having lived in Cairo, Paris, Boston, and Berlin, her work explores identity, femininity, urban transformation, and the interplay between personal and collective memory. Through re-contextualized imagery, her work draws from the everyday, public spaces, bodily autonomy, and the politics of desire, while engaging with archival strategies and participatory elements. Her work has been exhibited internationally, including in London, Cape Town, Washington, Paris, Arnhem, and Cairo.