Photography by Parminder Kaur
Arts Gen has been honoured to support artist Lara Chamas with their exhibition and artist dinner “Swallow it without salt”.
Derived from a saying boasting both adoration and urgency, “Swallow It Without Salt” reflects on food sovereignty in times of danger, scarcity, and hunger, inspired by her parent’s wartime storytelling and frugal home cooking.
Lara Chamas invited artists and creatives of militarised, invaded, and colonised backgrounds to an intimate art-dinner event of Levantine foods. Cooking like her mama and baba ate as kids; and how they fed their family as migrants, presenting the dishes in a to scale bronze cluster bomb shell adorned with Quranic fruits and flowers, much like the graves of martyrs. Lara’s work illustrates the ambivalence of nourishment and destruction of the body, prevalent globally.
Special thank you to Hyphenated Projects who hosted Lara’s arts dinner at their residency space in West Sunshine.