BEETSTERZWAAG.- Kunsthuis SYB introduces Nassib’s Bakery: Distributing Warmth, a project initiated by Mounira Al Solh, transforming SYB’s front room into a saj bakery this fall.

Nassib’s Bakery: Distributing Warmth is a re-enactment and continuation of the bakery initiated by artist Mounira Al Solh in Kassel during documenta 14, together with baker Um Ali (Mona el Durr). During this first iteration in Friesland and the Netherlands, Mounira Al Solh is joined by professional Lebanese Saj baker Zahraa Salman, the daughter of Um Ali. The bakery is conceived as a performative installation and developed during a residency in Beetsterzwaag. Al Solh and Salman transform SYB into a temporary bakery, a place where bread is baked and where stories about food, home and migration are shared with the village. Knowledge about Lebanese saj baking is transmitted through small workshops with the local community.

The installation draws on the current realities of food and breaking bread in communities shaken by war. What does it mean to eat and bake together while images of starvation multiply online? The activation of the bakery also draws on the layered history of SYB’s building itself: in the late 19th century, boterballetjes, a traditional Frisian sweet, were baked and sold from the front room. In Nassib’s Bakery: Distributing Warmth, this history meets Al Solh’s background through the preparation of manouche, a Levantine flatbread, topped with cheese or thyme, typically eaten in Lebanon, Syria and Palestine. These different temporal and geographical elements come together at Kunsthuis SYB and address how food and art connect different generations and cultures.

Nassib’s Bakery: Distributing Warmth is curated by Arnisa Zeqo

Mounira Al Solh is a prominent Dutch-Lebanese artist who draws, embroiders, paints, and creates installations, performances, and magazines. The personal is closely intertwined with the political throughout her practice. Through encounters and conversations with others, Al Solh explores themes such as migration, identity, language, and feminism. She studied at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam and currently teaches at the Kunstakademie in Kassel. Al Solh was one of the artists participating in documenta 14 in Kassel and Athens. Major solo exhibitions include I Strongly Believe in Our Right to Be Frivolous at the Art Institute of Chicago (2018) and the Lebanese Pavilion at the Venice Biennale (2024). Currently her solo exhibition, A land as big as her skin, is on view at the Bonnefantenmuseum in Maastricht. In 2013, she was Artist in Residence at Kunsthuis SYB, where, together with fellow artist Rumiko Hagiwara, she conducted research on the theme of laziness.

Zahraa Salman is a Lebanese baker, specialized in Lebanese traditional cooking, making saj bread and manouche. She learned from her mother, the renowned Um Ali (Mona el Durr) who had been baking bread since childhood as a way for survival and raising her family members in South Lebanon. Um Ali is of Palestinian descent. At the time of her upbringing borders were not closed, and people commuted between South Lebanon and Palestine as a common way to live.