What Remains at the Table

The smell of fenugreek transports me to Friday mornings in Cairo, when my father cooked bastirma and eggs. Only later did I realize that this staple dish was brought in by Armenians, carrying a shared history and our collective memories. Developed during the CROSS-LOOKING residency in Yerevan, What remains at the Table examines traditional food practices as counter-gestures to capitalist efficiency, preserving generational knowledge in a world where convenience erodes memory. In rural Armenia, the domestic household emerges as an underappreciated institution of identity: an autonomous ecosystem where food is grown, fermented, dried, and shared, continuously sustaining the cultural practices that anchor collective memory. Using experimental analogue printing techniques, anthotypes, cyanotype, chlorophyll printing, cyanolumen, and silver halide emulsion, I approach photography as a cooking process. Some of these methods produce inherently ephemeral images that fade, mold, or transform over time, embracing impermanence as a conceptual stance against photographic permanence.


CROSS-LOOKING: East-West Artistic Residencies  is a collaboration between NOOR, Organ Vida International Photography Festival, the National Gallery of Armenia, Université Paris Cité, Unione  della Romagna Faentina and Università Iuav di Venezia. The project is co-funded by Creative Europe under project 101174138 — CROSS-LOOKING.

Exhibition at Medrar, Cairo
March 2026