PALAN & PAKGHOR - The Social Kitchen (Dinner)
As part of the After Rain 2024 Diriyah Contemporary Art Biennale, Britto Arts Trust–a Dhaka-based artist-run collective–is calling for volunteers to bring their project, Palan & Pakghor (The Kitchen Garden and The Social Kitchen), to life. Britto Arts Trust has constructed an outdoor kitchen and a garden where people can gather to cook, tell stories and serve food, snacks, or drinks prepared from recipes representing a variety of communities residing in Riyadh.
In Diriyah, Britto Arts Trust welcomes visitors into an ecological, social, and diasporic space defined by the structures of the Bengali palan and pakghor. The palan is a traditional kitchen garden usually looked after by women and children, which supplies the pakghor, a living-room-like family kitchen. The palan grows vegetables and culinary herbs supplied by Alzahrani Farm in Diriyah, while the pakghor is activated by volunteers from different parts of Riyadh, who sign up to cook for Biennale visitors.
Join us for dinner!
And to volunteer for cooking, please book available slots with:
Presented By
Mahbubur Rahman & Tayeba Lipi
What started in the living room of artists Tayeba Begum Lipi and Mahbubur Rahman in 2002 as a place for gathering has become a stable organization, which, with the support of the Triangle Network, has filled gaps in the Bangladeshi art scene for over two decades. Britto Arts Trust is now a longstanding artists’ collective that operates a permanent space in Dhaka but is active in many places throughout Bangladesh. Fostering artistic practice and community engagement, it offers alternative education programs, where formal structures are absent, and hosts artists’ residencies in Dhaka that have facilitated connections between local and international practitioners. During the COVID pandemic, Britto Arts Trust initiated the project ZERO WASTE—FoodArt (2020), which involved national and international participants in growing and distributing locally grown foods.