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Artist Hesam Salehbeig will prepare an Iranian meal for the second gathering of COMMUNITY KITCHEN DINNERS.

“Iranian cuisine, much like Persian carpet weaving, is fundamentally a folk art shaped within the homes of ordinary people and carried through generations by women across cities and villages. Although exceptional examples have emerged from aristocratic households and royal courts, the essence of Iranian cooking remains rooted in domestic knowledge, memory, and care. Professional cooking differs not in method, but in scale: the chef reproduces the cooking of household women with larger quantities and greater equipment, always attempting to reach the depth and precision of home cooking.”

(Ketab-e Mostatab-e Ashpazi by Najaf Daryabandari and Fahimeh Rastkar, 2009.)

For the second dinner, Hesam draws from recipes gathered from Iranian women throughout his life, alongside recipes preserved through the work of researchers and archival projects across different periods and regions of Iran.

A portion of the proceeds will be donated to support a family whose home destroyed during the war in Iran. Many families have been displaced or deeply affected, and this gathering hopes to contribute, even modestly, to the rebuilding of their lives and communities.

Hesam Salehbeig (they/them) is an Iranian, Chicago-based interdisciplinary artist and curator. Rooted in diasporic memory and Iranian mystical cosmologies, their work explores embodiment, self-transformation, and self-authorship through immersive and durational forms, often creating dialogues between Eastern cultural traditions and contemporary performance practices.

Tickets: https://publicmediainstitute-bloom.kindful.com/e/peace-dinner-june-15th