TIFF Lightbox
350 King St W, Toronto,
Gallery (Lobby)

Palestinian artist Jude Abu Zaineh and researcher at Sufra Archive Salma Serry will explore the intersections of culture, displacement, and belonging through interdisciplinary practices. Abu Zaineh will discuss how she used art, food, and technology to examine diaspora and home, while Serry will share insights from her West Asian food archive and research on power infrastructures within food systems, highlighting shared themes of cultural preservation and identity.

Bios:

Jude Abu Zaineh is a Palestinian-Canadian interdisciplinary artist-curator working across art, food, science, and technology studies. Her work develops counter-archive practices and investigates themes of culture, displacement, storytelling, diaspora, and belonging, through de-colonial and feminist perspectives. She examines ideals of home and community influenced by her childhood and upbringing in Southwest Asia. 

Abu Zaineh is the recipient of several awards including, the 2020 William and Meredith Saunderson Prizes for Emerging Artists, and was one of the first selected artists to participate in a collaborative residency with the Ontario Science Centre and MOCA Toronto (Canada). She has presented her works at Ireland Glass Biennale; Malta Society of Arts, Valletta, Malta; Cultivamos Cultura, São Luis, Portugal; Museu de Arte, Arquitetura e Tecnologia, Lisbon, Portugal; Centro de Cultura Digital, Mexico City, Mexico; SVA, NYC, USA; Institute of Contemporary Art San Francisco, USA; Forest City Gallery, London, Canada; Art Gallery of Windsor, Canada; Centre Culturel Canadien, Paris, France; Museum London, Canada; Museum of Glass, Washington, USA, and more.

Salma Serry is a doctoral researcher and cultural worker specialized in the history of food in West Asia and Egypt. She is also the curator of @Sufra_Archive, a digital archive project and social media platform dedicated to West Asian and North African food history and culture. Currently, Salma is working on a PhD in History in the University of Toronto with a specialization in Food Studies at the Culinaria Research Center. Her research projects revolve broadly around infrastructures of power and food systems. Her PhD project was recently awarded the distinguished SSHRC Doctoral Award from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council in Canada, while her art projects have received the Research on the Arts grant from the Arab Fund for Arts and Culture (AFAC) and the Arab Council for Social Sciences (ACSS). Her research and public programming projects have been exhibited at Art Jameel (Dubai), Hayy Jameel (Jeddah), the Arab Council for Social Sciences (Beirut), the Islamic Biennial (Jeddah), and Cairo Design Week, focusing on the intersection of food history, culture, and the art.