Alireza Bayat, Areum Kim, Svati Shah and Yafa Café
gastropoetics
12 January - 24 February, 2024
PLATFORM centre is excited to present gastropoetics, a group exhibition of new works
by Alireza Bayat (MB), Areum Kim (AB), Svati Shah (IMD) and Yafa Café (MB) curated by our Curator in Residence, Noor Bhangu (MB/NO).
EXHIBITION | 12 January - 24 February, 2024
OPENING RECEPTION AND TALK | 12 January, 6PM - 9PM
In the 21st century, food has emerged as a site through which to recuperate lost solidarities and shared histories. Owing to the catastrophic ruptures dealt by post-9/11 racisms and ongoing genocides, the practices of sharing food across cultural borders has become a palliative salve to sweeten and digest ethnic difference. Gastropoetics, as an exhibition and public program, focuses on the popular medium of ethnic cookbooks to question the proposed fallacy that cultural differences, racial inequities, and psychoaffective harms of displacement can be treated by learning about the culinary cultures of the Other. The exhibition will feature four researcher-artists, including Alireza Bayat, Areum Kim, Svati Shah, and Yafa Cafe, to share their reflections on the culinary tropes expounded in ethnic cookbooks and other printed matter.
READ NOOR BHANGU'S FULL EXHIBITION ESSAY HERE
BIOGRAPHIES
Alireza Bayat (MB) is an independent curator and cultural worker currently based in Winnipeg-Manitoba. He is a graduate of M.A. Cultural Studies/Curatorial Practices stream from the University of Winnipeg. He also has a Master degree from Azad University-Tehran in Art Studies, where he completed a thesis on the notions of gender and sexuality in 19th century Iranian written and visual texts (2018). Alireza Published a book (from the cycle of silence-2018) on non-conformist forms of publication and distribution of literature in the USSR. He was selected for a curatorial exchange program between Iran and Norway which led to co-curation of a joint exhibition, “Shadows of Garden” (2016-2017). He has also worked as an art advisor in multiple artistic and commercial institutions. Alireza will curate a forthcoming exhibition for the 3.14 Art Gallery-Bergen, Norway- that centers around Post-Taliban situation of women and ethnic minorities of Afghanistan (January 2024).
Noor Bhangu (MB/NO) is a curator and scholar, whose practice is rooted in relational curatorial aesthetics and practices. Through curatorial intervention, she hopes to involve politics of history, memory and materiality to problematize dominant histories of representation. She completed her BA in the History of Art and her MA in Cultural Studies: Curatorial Practices at the University of Winnipeg. In 2018, she began her PhD in Communication and Culture at Toronto Metropolitan University and York University in Tkaronto, Toronto. Her past projects include Not the Camera, But the Filing Cabinet (2018) at Gallery 1C03, even the birds are walking (2020) at Latitude 53, the excess is ritual (2023) at Dunlop Gallery, and Homorientalism (2023) at Smack Mellon. She is currently working on a group exhibition and public program, Queer Islamic Art, at Nasjonalmuseet for Spring 2025.
Areum Kim (AB) (she/her) is a writer, book-maker and arts organizer based in Mohkinstsis/Calgary, AB. Her research is often concerned with diaspora and translation. With her collaborator, she runs Yolkless Press, an initiative to make artists’ publications.
Svati Shah (IMD) is an anthropologist who works on queer and feminist theory, space, and political economy in India. They are an Associate Professor of Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, with affiliations at the University of Bergen in Norway and the University of Pretoria in South Africa. Their cooking and fermentation practice is part of a larger critique of what is often lost for queer and non-cisgender people of color when we break the normative rules of social reproduction. This is particularly for immigrant queer and transgender people living in the Euro-American North. Sva makes and invents food and ferments to give them away as a gesture of love, and in rebellion against this norm.
Yafa Café (MB) is a world of Arabic cooking and an exciting new addition to Winnipeg. Located between Polo Park and the Assiniboine Park/Zoo, they offer an Arabic fusion, providing a distinct Arabic twist to many Canadian favorites, while introducing a distinct cultural flavor to the community, contributing to the transformation of their corner into a ‘New Arabia.’
The cafe is the brainchild of a passionate owner who longs for the vibrant atmosphere of Downtown Jerusalem, Beirut, Baghdad and Algiers here in Winnipeg. The name is their daughter’s name, named by her grandfather, inspired by Yafa, a Palestinian coastal city that was the site of major trading activity since the second millennium. It was a cultural center, where most Palestinian newspapers and magazines were published and known for its numerous cafés and modernity hence comes the name of Yafa Café.
