Food, Land and Rituals is the second product of our Together Project, bringing Sudan, Jammu and Kashmir, Azad Jammu and Kashmir, the Rohingya community, and Palestine together through the things we grow, cook, serve, and gather around.
Created with British-Bangladeshi illustrator Maryam Huq, the artwork is divided into four sections, each rooted in a different place and explored through food, agriculture, and everyday ritual. At first they appear as separate tables, but look a little closer and familiar threads begin to emerge: rice grown from the land, tea poured for a pause or conversation, vegetables cultivated and shared, bread passed between people, and recipes that continue through families even when people themselves are displaced.
Sudan begins with ful, one of the country’s most familiar everyday dishes. The bread used to scoop and share it creates a connection with the traditions of the neighbourhood baker in Kashmir and the taboon in Palestine, where bread is similarly tied to daily routine, community, and the household.
Rice creates another thread, connecting the agricultural landscape of Jammu and Kashmir with Bangladesh, the host country of displaced Rohingya communities. Tea carries its own connection: salted nun chai and the sweet pink chai familiar in Azad Jammu and Kashmir sit alongside Sudanese shai and tea shared around Palestinian tables, each becoming a reason to stop, gather, and talk.
The Rohingya section centres rice, aubergine, pumpkin, and banana leaf, reflecting foods and agricultural traditions connected to life before displacement, while Palestine is represented through musakhan, olives, citrus, and the ingredients deeply connected to its agricultural landscape.
For this edition of the artwork, the story continues through the object itself. We worked with Tatreez Collective to source Mansouri cotton and have the tea towels sewn in Palestine, intentionally bringing more people into the project and allowing its impact to extend beyond a single maker.
The finished artwork is screen printed by Nasri in his workshop in Ramallah, West Bank, placing another stage of production directly within Palestine.
Across all four sections, the similarities are not there to suggest that these cultures are the same. Instead, they reveal connections we may never have realised were there: bread shaped by communal ritual, rice grown across different landscapes, tea becoming a reason to stop and talk, crops carrying the memory of land, and meals creating a place to gather even when home has been disrupted.
Artwork by Maryam Huq @vividbymaryam.
