Holy Cow and the Pomegranate: Sumac

Based on a residency at Kaaitheater and with The Cooking Group in De Kriekelaar, Samah will present a new version of Holy Cow and the Pomegranate, a dinner performance inspired by the foods made to celebrate social and spiritual events in people’s lives.  

Take a deep dive into your love and curiosity for food with Samah Hijawi’s performance dinner Holy Cow and the Pomegranate. In her research on the movement of food-making practices through trade and migration, Samah invites us to experience food from the smallest ingredients of a dish. Starting from a single herb or spice, we begin to taste slowly as she builds up a generous meal. Meanwhile, she weaves the unlikely stories of the people, the landscapes (on earth and in outer space), and the recipes that can be traced by following the life-line of a plant.  

'Food is often categorized by nationality, such as Palestinian food or Belgian food. In reality, both are good examples of quite small countries where culinary traditions and cultures are much more complicated than their national borders.' — etcetera 

'During the show, each table is set with a plant that I consider to be a collaborator. I invite the participants to realise that what we call an 'ingredient' has a life of its own, and that we also have things to learn from it.' — Bruzz 

• Samah Hijawi (she/her) is a multi-media artist: a painter, a performer, an astrologer, a storyteller, a researcher, an academic and a cook. Regardless of the form through which she materializes her work, her projects are always deeply rooted in historical narratives which are used to re-imagine our contemporary life outside of the radicalized and polarized discourses that direct our lives today. Holy Cow and the Pomegranate was first performed for an online audience in 2020 at Kaaitheater, within the frame of A Series of More Than Human Encounters, a collaboration with VUB Crosstalks.