The Kitchen as Studio_1.jpg
The Kitchen as Studio_2.jpg
The Kitchen as Studio_4.jpg
The Kitchen as Studio_5.jpg
The Kitchen as Studio_6.jpg
The Kitchen as Studio_7.jpg
The Kitchen as Studio_8.jpg
The Kitchen as Studio_9.jpg
The Kitchen as Studio_10.jpg
The Kitchen as Studio_11.jpg
The Kitchen as Studio_12.jpg
The Kitchen as Studio_13.jpg
The Kitchen as Studio_14.jpg
The Kitchen as Studio_15.jpg
The Kitchen as Studio_16.jpg
The Kitchen as Studio_17.jpg
The Kitchen as Studio_18.jpg
The Kitchen as Studio_23.jpg
The Kitchen as Studio_25.jpg
The Kitchen as Studio_27.jpg
The Kitchen as Studio_28.jpg
The Kitchen as Studio_29.jpg
The Kitchen as Studio_30.jpg
The Kitchen as Studio_31.jpg
The Kitchen as Studio_32.jpg
The Kitchen as Studio_33.jpg
The Kitchen as Studio_34.jpg
The Kitchen as Studio_35.jpg
The Kitchen as Studio_36.jpg
The Kitchen as Studio_37.jpg
The Kitchen as Studio_38.jpg
The Kitchen as Studio_39.jpg
The Kitchen as Studio_40.jpg
The Kitchen as Studio_41.jpg
The Kitchen as Studio_43.jpg
The Kitchen as Studio_45.jpg
The Kitchen as Studio_46.jpg
The Kitchen as Studio_47.jpg
The Kitchen as Studio_48.jpg
The Kitchen as Studio_49.jpg
The Kitchen as Studio_50.jpg
The Kitchen as Studio_51.jpg
The Kitchen as Studio_52.jpg
The Kitchen as Studio_53.jpg
Photography by Russell Yusuf. 'Subhiye: Pastiched Narratives' with 'Ahlan Club' and 'the memo club' for The Kitchen As Studio. Presented by Alserkal Arts Foundation.

Photography by Russell Yusuf. 'Subhiye: Pastiched Narratives' with 'Ahlan Club' and 'the memo club' for The Kitchen As Studio. Presented by Alserkal Arts Foundation.

1.png
2.png
3.png
4.png
5.png
6.png
7.png
8.png
9.png

Community Subhiye:

Pastiched Narratives

Ahlan Club and the memo club gathered friends, loved ones, and community together for a Subhiye—a morning of shared food, stories, making, and collective imagination.

The table that came together was shaped by the cultures, memories, and histories of each collaborator. Each dish carried a place, a person, a lineage; together, they formed a shared meal through which we remembered, nourished, and encountered one another.

Subhiye has no direct English translation, naming something larger than language’s ability to contain. Rooted in the Arabic word sabāh (صباح), meaning “morning,” a Subhiye is the ritual of gathering with neighbors, friends, and loved ones over coffee, breaking bread, and conversation. It is an offering of time as much as food—a practice of lingering, listening, and beginning the day in one another’s company. Though its forms have shifted across generations and geographies, its heart remains: gathering without urgency, sharing what we have, and affirming that community is something we make together.

During the gathering, participants were invited to imagine their own Subhiye through the practice of handmade paper. For The Memo Club, papermaking became a communal ritual: a collective of hands tearing, soaking, blending, forming with food, flora, and fauna, and pressing together—echoing the gestures of kneading dough and breaking bread. Like a shared meal, paper emerged through care, patience, and many hands working in concert.

Using handmade paper, participants created collages that dreamed into being gatherings of their own. Who was seated around their tables? What stories were being told? What filled the room with warmth? Where did these gatherings take place, and what did they ask us to remember?

Together, we shared a meal, made with our hands, and imagined new ways of being with one another—honoring the gatherings we inherited while creating those still to come. Pastiched Narratives became, in this way, both a gathering and an archive: a collection of fragments, memories, gestures, recipes, and imagined futures held together by many hands.