Episode 383- Sarah Khan: Documenting the Immigrant Experience

0:00This is The Conversation. It's a podcast that goes behind the scenes of the contemporary art worlds. Welcome to the show. I am Michael Shaw. This is episode 383 with Sarah Kahn. She is an artist living between Western Massachusetts and New York City. And a lot more about her and what she does in a moment. The website for this show is theconversationpod.com, where you can see images of Sarah at Kohler Center.

0:37You can see some of the vendors from her series, Queen's Migrant Kitchens. A couple of her installations of Speak, Sing, Shout, which has been going on for a while. You can also see an install view of one of the 50 square grids that make up the series Book of Gestures, which is described as a film loop of a hand gesture related to the processing of a food or recipe.

1:10All gestures derived from five women who labored daily at home and then in the old city as cooks or farmers in Fez, Morocco. And I believe other cities were done as well. In any case, that's a little taste of what we talk about. So hello and welcome to 2026, such as it is. Just to get this out of the way, I know, I want you to know that I know that it's a shit show out there. And you're not here for more talk about the shit show, but I just want to let you know that I'm aware of it.

1:41I assume you are aware of it. If you are not, you know, just go check out the front page of the New York Times website or the Washington Post or the London Financial Times or whatever your non-Fox News news feed of choice is. And yeah, but I'm sure all of you are at least somewhat aware and maybe like me, you know, you can only take a little bit at a time. I get a ton just from the stories on Instagram, plenty there.

2:12And as you have probably confronted, you know, as much as some of us would like to kind of be blissfully ignorant, it ultimately is probably morally better for our conscience to at least track a bit a day or a bit a week of what's going on. Right. So anyway, enough about that. I'm going to tell you about the virtual cafe that happened about three or so weeks ago that a few of you made, others wanted to make, and maybe some of you listening will make the next time.

2:49I'm going to tell you more about that in the outro because I don't want to leave anything out and I don't want you to be impatient getting to this episode. Here's one quick preview. What are your top five films ever? Your top five films. Hoping that this will be a future little segment, mini segment that I can announce a few of your top fives in the intro in the future and have maybe even on the website. So more on that in the back end.

3:20So Sarah Khan is an artist who did not get a BFA or MFA. She actually has a background in integrative medicine and nutrition and did that for a number of years and certainly is using some of that in her, at least for context and maybe a little bit of insight, in her Migrant Kitchen series. We talk a lot in the first part of our conversation about the vendors, particularly in New York, and the history of vendors in New York and how insane it is trying to get a license there because there's such a long wait that a lot of people are forced to go into the black market, which, as you can probably imagine, is a fortune to get your license.

4:09So a lot of complicated stuff going on and, yeah, we talk about that a lot. That will be in this upcoming main feed of the episode to hear the second half where we talk more about that, more about her background in integrative medicine and teaching chefs about nutrition and all sorts of things. I ask her for her recommendation for what we can do ourselves for our own integrative medicine, and she talks about spices that you can grow yourself and food that you can grow yourself, potentially.

4:45So that's all going to be on the back end. That is to say, the Patreon feed. I will tell you more about that on the outro for now. Hope you're doing okay. And more in the outro on the back end of this main feed episode. So here we go with Sarah Kahn. Ciao for now.

5:08Okay, Sarah Kahn. You used the K to distinguish from the other Sarah Kahn that's out there? There's hundreds of them, apparently. We were all named. And I gave a talk the other day. There were like four of us. And, yeah, I gave, yeah. There were four Sarah Kahn's? Yeah. I was like, what is going on? No, there were four Sarah's. But then I gave a tour the other day at Brick, and there was another Sarah Kahn. And I've been at conferences where they used another Sarah Kahn's bio for me.

5:42I mean, that's how bad it is. I'm like, no, I don't write for, I mean, I don't write for the New York Times, you know. So, yeah. And then there's a political scientist at Yale. And, yeah, we're everywhere. Yeah. There are a lot of Shaw's out there, too. Yeah. Not very many Michaels, but there is one Michael Shaw who occasionally publishes in the cartoons in the New Yorker. But anyway, it's, yeah, it's a problem, but not a huge one for both of us. So where are you now, Sarah?

6:13Right now. Are you? I'm in Western Mass. I'm in Hadley, Massachusetts. Is that in Berkshires? Just outside, not in the Berkshires. It's in that five college area where there's Smith College and Amherst College and UMass and Mount Holyoke and Hampshire. Yeah. And is that because your partner works at one of those schools? No, he used to. He used to work at UW-Madison in Wisconsin. But then we left there and now bought a very small farmhouse with a big chicken coop.

6:51And so I'm in the chick coop happily. It's nice to be back in here. It's been about a good month where I haven't been able to make. And so it's nice to just kind of be. Wait, you call that giant loft space during the chicken coop? Yeah, the chick coop. But, oh, oh, okay, got it. Not the chicken coop, the chick coop. So only women are allowed in that space? No, no, it's just seriously playful and playfully serious. Do you have a chicken coop, though? I mean, you're begging that question.

7:21Yeah, it used to be a chicken coop. It used to be. They used to raise industrial chickens. That's some bad mojo. Sorry. No, well, yeah. But all along the wall were these laying hen boxes, and they were cut up. We cleaned them, washed them, put them in the sun, did a water polyurethane, and now they're our bookshelves. So little things, little things. Original floor. I know there's chicken shit in there, but, hey, it goes on our bookshelf.

7:54That's fine. That's not bad. That's not bad mojo at all, I don't think. I think the industrial part's the bad mojo. But anyway, how often do you go back, and you live also in Queens, right? In New York, yes. Part-time, yes. As long as we can afford it. That's what we're going to do. I don't know how long it's going to last, but... Do you think you're leaning towards settling more here, where you are now? To have a space is a little miracle.

8:24So I don't want to give that up. But we'll see. We'll see. It depends on, you know, so many factors. What do you mean by to have a space? Are you saying to have an apartment in New York City, or to have this studio here, where you are? I've never had a studio. I've always been in the kitchen, on the floor. In the beginning, it was a lot of film and photography. So that was on the computer with an editor, and it was going out into the field, but you didn't need a huge space, but now it's nice to have this.

8:57What you're describing dovetails with something, a question that's come up before, but it was discussed in a webinar that I visited the other day, and it is, is it okay to have your studio at home when you're, when you have a studio visit, you know? Yeah. It's basically like, what are the, what's the etiquette, what are the guidelines for having a, you know, a serious studio visit? And one of them is like, what if you are, if your kitchen is your studio, you know? So it sounds like you're, can you think of, does this make you think of a particular

9:30studio visit you had when, you know, you were actually showing like objects to a visitor in your home or even in your kitchen? Or was it more like you're just showing videos on your laptop? Yeah, it was more just showing videos, but now bringing people here to have studio visits just takes it, it's just so much easier. It's so much easier. There's space and you can talk and you can go through different bodies of work and there's just space, there's space.

10:02And I can spread out, like I'm looking, I can spread out and I can have a place where, okay, here's where I'm working on coloring photographs. And here's where I'm experimenting with collaging. And here's where I have, you know, five copies of these larger silver gelatin prints. How am I going to look at them? You know, just the capacity to, um, to spread out, to spread out. And the, I don't know how many times I've, you know, been in my apartment, you know, someone's

10:36coming over, cleaning it up, putting it all away. And, and so it breaks the flow. It breaks the capacity to keep working. So it's a real gift to be able to leave this a hot mess or what would appear to be a hot mess, but come back and then like, oh, okay. I left that there. Let me pick up that color. Let me pick up that thread. Let me pick up that, um, piece of porcelain and, and look at it. For me, if it's, I need stuff out. I realized, yeah, not everybody's that way, but it's just like, oh, if you have it out,

11:11you can. Yeah. People who have studios, you know, they don't want to people like I shared a studio once that was terrible. You know, I had studio be one of the, like a second bedroom. Um, but yeah, people don't, artists don't want to have to clean up every time they finish. They just want to leave it spread out. Yeah, of course. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, but I'm, but I'm talking about all this place because where is your place in New York? Is it not in Queens? No, it's in Manhattan.

11:41Yeah. Oh, it's in Manhattan. Right. I went to Columbia University and so did a lot of graduate work there. And so, you know, you always just end up living in one place. Um, that's just lived in like six or seven different places since the late eighties. Um, and so it becomes home because it's familiar and the thought of moving is a real pain. So, so it's near Columbia, the place that you live there. It's no, it's, it's about 20, 30 blocks away. Oh, okay. Got it. 116th. And I did work there, but then the medical school and the school of public health is even

12:14further up in the 160s. Um, so yeah, so it was in that area. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. Well, you know why I'm asking like about location is because of the work that you've been doing about Queens, particularly the migrant or immigrant, um, cooks. The Queens kitchen. Yeah. Are you, are you, is that, would you say that chapter is closed for now or are you going to keep shooting more food truck and otherwise cooks of the area?

12:46What's, what's nice and what's happening is I would love to continue doing that or doing iterations of it. Um, of those nine short films, there's one that I did called Peddlers, Police and Power. And it was basically looking at, um, street vendors kind of in the 1920s, 1910s in New York City and there was some great footage that I accessed. And I say all this to say that there's the Museum of Food and Drink in Dumbo in Brooklyn

13:17and they're doing a big show that opens December 2nd called Street Food City. So it's the history of street food in New York. And so they're going to be using one of those films. And I just met with the two amazing, um, women community organizers who were working at Street Bender Project in 2015 when I, when I began this, uh, Basma Eid and Elise Golden. And they're wonderful, wonderful activists, um, who's continue in that vein, but not at

13:49the Street Bender Project, but they, uh, did beautiful work with the street vendors. And, and this is talking about, I guess, a social practice too, at the same time. And so I got to know them and they'd been working with the street vendor community for a long time. And, um, because they got to know me and my work ethic, um, they facilitated and helped me identify street vendors. Um, and so I'd love to continue. So I just had dinner with them last week and was just telling them.

14:20And so we're thinking how to, how to continue it, what to do, revisit people that I already visited. But there's a really good organization called the Street Bender Project. And they're still in existence. They're fighting for the exact same things they were fighting for 10 years ago. And so, um, leadership has changed, which is, uh, for the better. Um, it's transitioned to leadership, uh, being, uh, represented by people who are actually were street vendors. Um, not that it wasn't good before, but it's, it's, it's, uh, there's more identification when

14:56you have someone running it who comes from the practice of street bending. And so we'll see how that lands now. I mean, there's so much happening in New York right now because the background of the Queens migrant kitchens was, I wanted to interview a lot, as many as I could, Arab and Muslim folks in Queens who are doing stuff related to food in general. Didn't have to be street vendors. And because it was 2015, because it was 15 years after 9-11, um, I was born in Pakistan.

15:33Uh, I was born a Muslim. Um, I studied Middle Eastern history and Arabic. So I can get by, um, in making a fool of myself speaking, you know, Arabic or Urdu, uh, because there's nobody who isn't appreciative of you trying to speak their language. And so I did that and I couldn't make headway. I couldn't make headway. What does that mean? You couldn't make headway? I couldn't. People were like, they don't, I, I didn't pull out my camera. I certainly didn't record.

16:04Um, they were happy to talk about the food. They were happy to feed me and have me write about it. But, um, everybody was, uh, hesitant. And they were hesitant. They were afraid for their safety? They were afraid for their safety, but they were afraid of being surveyed. Because after 9-11, um, a type of COINTELPRO happened where Muslims were targeted. Um, and so the last film I made in that series was actually the one that I was trying to do

16:34in the beginning. But it's just always good, you know, we have these intentions and visions of projects and how you're going to go about doing it. Even if you are, have one step in those, one foot in those worlds, right? But what was happening because of Elise and Basma, the Latinx, South American-descended street vendors were very active. Uh, they were so active that they said, we want a street food vendor contingent that deals with our issues in Corona Queens, specific to Latinx or South, South American-descended

17:11street food vendors. And they were, they were like, they were politically active. They didn't, they had different challenges. So I plan and I plan and I plan, but then you have to let go and just see what doors open. And so there was this beautiful woman named Evelia who had a street cart. And I ended up highlighting her and doing a short film about her. And this is the beauty of the impact of your work. If this is the type of impact you want to have is that a colleague of mine who worked

17:42at National Geographic, I guess, uh, uh, Anthony Bourdain's Parts Unknown had reached out to her and they said, well, check out Sarah Khan if you want to do a thing on Queens. Cause she's working with a lot of Queens street vendors by this time. So they reached out and I made sure Evelia was highlighted. I made sure that another Nigerian woman in the Jamaica part of, um, Queens was highlighted. Uh, and so they were highlighted on his show. And then because of that, Evelia, you know, fast forward, got, they both got a lot of notoriety.

18:15Um, and now she has a brick and mortar, uh, tamale place in addition to the street vendor, um, uh, corner. Um, and so that's the beauty of, for me doing that kind of work and, and how it landed now in this, the street vendors are, it's a messed up system in that they have a limited number of, um, licenses, yeah, permits, licenses. Uh, and, and so there's a whole black market that goes on where they, they cost 200 bucks,

18:51but you pay 15,000, 8,000, 20,000 depending. So maybe that will change in the coming year. We'll see, but it would be nice to revisit it cause there's still challenges. There's still problems. So it would be nice to, to see. And so I'm looking forward to the street street food city and being in touch with them and seeing what they're doing. Cause I don't want to do something that someone's already done. You want to do something from a new angle, from a new perspective, new people, younger people, older people, or how are they faring? Does that, does that address, does that give you a background?

19:25Well, I think you were addressing whether you are going to continue right with those films, because that's a big part of the work that you've been doing. And that's what, but I think we should just back up because even though you did hit on it, something that I don't think is become, is quite clear to listeners is there are what? 20 or 30,000 vendors in the city. And then there are 3,000 permits.

19:57I'm vaguely remembering. And it's such a messed up system. Um, you do wonder though, I mean, it's hard unless you live in the city or even if you do to visualize the math, you know, of the need for that much street vending. I mean, you know, it is a huge city and it's so dense. So maybe, uh, it works, but it seems like in, um, Jackson Heights perhaps, and, you know,

20:29other Queens neighborhoods, there might be more competition or density than there's a need for, but I, I don't know. I mean, just maybe the question is 30,000 vendors sounds like a lot, but is the, the question is, is it the right amount? And is, you know, is it the, is it a good balance of, you know, supply and demand? Yeah. Well, we can't even get to that question in terms of political analysis or organizing or

21:01assessment. And I'm hoping that can happen. And vendors are not just food vendors. They're vending all types of things. Uh, and so I would want there to be the capacity and the intention to say, okay, what's happening in Queens? We have 2.3, 2.5 million people in Queens. These are the neighborhoods who wants, you know, what are the caps, but they have to be more realistic caps because the black market is not fair. Um, and there was a black market a hundred years ago, similar things, similar arguments.

21:34And those arguments really haven't changed at all. Business owners saying you're impeding on my capacity to sell. Whereas some studies have shown that in fact, it kind of increases footage for traffic to your businesses. If you sell stuff outside. So, um, but I would want there to be a proper assessment and that isn't even possible right now. And that's what I think needs to be done. And then you take it from there and then you say, okay, um, but you shouldn't be paying five, 10, 15, $20,000 for a $200, $250 license, whether you have, uh, 10,000 vendors approved

22:11or 30,000. Um, so that's a good starting point. Why isn't an assessment possible right now? I think because of political stalemates, because of an incapacity to move beyond the, the, the standstill. Um, and I'm thinking, I'm hoping that with the new administration, perhaps some of these things can be addressed. Right. I don't want to, it's sad. You don't want to hope. Um, uh, I guess.

22:42Yeah. Especially since it's been more than a hundred years and it's basically, they're stuck in the same place as your, as your film points out. Yeah. It's the same thing. It's the same thing. And, and that was done, what, 10 years ago, 10, nine, eight, nine years ago. So you mean that you made the films? Yeah. Right. Okay. It was 2015 to like 2018. I, so now I understand why you're so antsy. You're like, why, why are we talking about something I did nine, 10 years ago? Um, no, it's okay. They're present. I mean, what I like is they're present.

23:12I give talks about them still. Um, and that peddlers, police and plat power is relevant. And the last film called surviving surveillance, catering to America is very relevant. Is that the one with the, the Pakistani woman who's cooking at home? Yeah. Yeah. I, I saw all of them. So yeah, that's about, that's what you're talking about. Yeah. Yeah. Son. That is very, very prescient. That piece because it, it's so, it's so familiar to the ice stories that we're becoming

23:45more familiar with. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. One of the things we talked about when we spoke before is at least it was my sort of angle. It may, it may or may not be yours as well as filmmaking that you've done and how, to what extent that is filmmaking, right? I, I, I guess I'm getting at, it's kind of fluid or flexible, right? It can be part of the organizing world as you sort of alluded to, but it could potentially

24:18potentially be part of the art world even. It seems like it's more towards the former than the latter. But my question to you last time, which you can bring, we can bring up again is what is your experience moving from world to world, you know? And is that also, does that also feel fluid or does it feel very truncated or, you know, very distinct from one place to the next? When you, when you, when you mean world to world, do you mean region to region geographically

24:49or do you mean medium or even within the medium? I mean, more medium culture and, you know, class, all those kinds of things. Yeah. Yeah. That's a good question. Um, I think for me, it's more, the medium is secondary and the message is more important. So what's in front of me? What have I collected? Is it film? Is it photography? And then how can I use it to talk about, um, particular things? Like for example, I have this body of work that's up in, uh, Brooklyn right now.

25:24And, uh, it's called speak, sing, shout, we too sing America. And there's prints and porcelains, but there's also a room dedicated to something that I call the cookbook of gestures. And so I was in Fez, Morocco, uh, working in, um, the enclosed city of Fez, the old city of Fez, which to me is very much like Queens in terms of it's a crossroads, it's North Africans and sub-Saharan Africans. Um, the Northern part of the old city is more conservative.

25:55The Southern part is a center for a major education, one of the oldest universities founded by a woman where a lot of Sufis come from all over the world. And so, um, and you were shooting there or what? Yeah, I was shooting there. I was shooting, um, uh, I had had a research grant in India the year before my partner accompanied me. Then he had a research grant in Fez. And so I accompanied him. And so I made a series of seven films based on five recipes.

26:27And, um, uh, there are 50 channels, 10 by five, and they're all gestures. They're hand gestures of making a particular recipe from beginning to end. And so that is actually very ASMR, very, very meditative, very, very slow. And I actually, when I give tours of my show, I end there because, um, when I have a bunch of people and I'm talking to them about their work, it's, there's a lot of good adrenaline. I was like, now we're going to go chill.

26:57We're going to close this out. And it's a dark room. Um, and so these seven films are on a loop. Um, and I love how it's black and white, even though Morocco is an incredibly colorful place and every place we filmed, it was beautiful mosaics. Um, but I made it black and white cause I wanted to focus on the gestures and the movements, um, and the sound, which was, we didn't slow that down. That was the sound of the day at that time, whether it was the morning with the birds chirping

27:27or later at the end of the day with also the birds chirping, or it was the sound of the souk or the storefront with people coming and going while the two women are kneading bread or baking bread. So there's Queen's Migrant Kitchens, these little mini documentaries. Then there's the cookbook of gestures. Um, and then there's some wonderful work that I've really enjoyed because I'm working with someone really wonderful. His name is Simone Ruby and he's an animator. And, um, I've known of his work for quite some time.

28:00We finally got to spend time this August, uh, in the studio and he's a former graffiti artist, but now his films are like graffiti art. And I don't know if you collaborate or if you have a solitary practice or it ebbs and flows, but, um, when I, I love collaborations because I don't know what I don't know. And I can say, Simone, can we do this? And he'll be in his little animation brain. And actually we just spoke the other day and he's like, Sada, I like that you don't know

28:30anything about animation. And I said, why? He's like, cause you don't anticipate the problems. You just say what you want and that's a good thing. And then I have to figure out, you know, we figure out how to do it. Um, so I don't hesitate in what I asked for, um, cause I know nothing. Um, so that's been really lovely. So for the show, we have, um, it's a blue and white theme. The porcelains are blue and white. So I wanted a blue and white theme and we took representations of plants, um, from particular

29:04Arab and Persian archives. And then we've animated them. Uh, and so that collaboration is really lovely. And that's, this is like the first, this is the appetizer to see what's possible. Um, so yeah, so here's those, those are three examples. And we didn't even talk about, you know, just, just digital photographs that I've also shown, um, about the porters that I've worked with in old Delhi. Old Delhi has the largest spice market in Asia.

29:35And it's also a part of the country where my father's family lived before partition. So it has a lot of meaning for me to go there and hang out another crossroads, right? I mean, old Delhi is a crossroads for migrants all over the country and Nepal because Nepalese can come and work there. And so that spice market. So I have these beautiful photographs, um, the go downs that they call or the storage units all have these corrugated garage doors kind of, and they're hot pink and lime green and

30:09blue and orange. And so I just, and, and I would go on Sundays and photograph them because they said, Sarah, come on Sundays. Nobody's here. We're chilling. Um, that's a good time to come. So still photography, film, film clips, um, documentaries, and now going into the, the cookbook of gestures, which I'd like to just make for the rest of my life. Like, oh, there's a recipe. Let me document it in this rigid format. Um, but when you're looking at 50 screens, you can just like kind of go down the rabbit

30:46hole because I slow it down, really slow it down. So you're picking up the dough and it's coming back and you can see the drops or you can see the gesture of them puncturing, you know, uh, a marzipan in dough. Um, so yeah. So it's an installation with 50 screens. Yeah, you know, it's one screen and they're 50 squares. Okay. 10 by five. Um, and, and I can, I can send you clips of that or photos of them.

31:19They're also photographs too. Well, what is the response been to that experience? Because that, even though it's ASMR and very meditative, it's a lot to look at at once.

31:30But the feeling is not overwhelming. It's, it's almost.

31:38Like I relax just thinking about it because it has that effect. And people have said that. I take them into the room at the end and they just, and we have a, um, a slanted, uh, floor that's carpeted with a bunch of pillows and people just sit back. And so your eyes can wander to these different slow gestures. Um, but it's not frenetic in any way, shape or form. In fact, it's the opposite of that. Right. I think perhaps because it's so slowed down.

32:08Right. And I'm noticing how slowed down I get just talking about it, which I really like. Well, you know, it really, it really made an impression on me the way you said, just thinking about it makes me relax or I can't remember exactly what, but it was something to that effect. And that's like, whoa, that's what you want. Right. You want to have, to be making or have made something that when you think about it actually slows you down. That's, uh, that to me is, shows a deep connection to meditation of some shape or form.

32:44Um, you know, and as, before I, you came upon that, or as you were saying that I was thinking that you, a lot of your work is so food and food culture based. And I guess I was wondering not to, you know, make it to sort of, uh, um, labeling or what have you, but it is kind of a niche in the art world or, and, or the film world and what have you. Right.

33:14I mean, do you find, and this goes back to sort of my earlier question about the distinctions between the different worlds, right? Maybe doing that piece and the other documentaries and so on about food and, you know, food making, maybe that is very much a niche in the art world or in photography world or what have you, um, as opposed to in the wider world where we're steeped. We're neck high in food content.

33:47Yeah. Right. Yeah. I mean, not your food content because your food content is a very particular kind. Obviously, when we open it up to the broader food content, we're thinking of reality shows and all that crap. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Which Anthony Bourdain may or may not, right, be connected to. But anyway, you can, you can take that however you will. I, I think the theme for us, if we had to choose one is, you know, these distinctions and this relative fluidity versus division, you know, of context.

34:23Yeah.

34:25Yeah. I, I, um, I make for myself first and foremost. Right. That was a big point you made last time that I really appreciate. And I want you to really dig into that. Like, is that something that evolved over time or was it more, this is more your genetics and, you know, was there a conversation or, or, or exchange with any of your mentors at any point that helped you get there? Yeah. I think it's actually just very practical, especially in this world of extra over information.

35:00Like you can get lost just looking at everything and getting the lay of the land and perhaps being trained in the academy, so to speak. Um, I am, I'm actually averse to, I love the research. I will do the research. I will actually do that. But I think I know, I know when to stop for me because if I just do that, I'll never make anything. Um, so the first thing is I think I haven't been formally trained. I don't have a BFA or an MFA. I do have a partner who's an arts historian and for 30 years.

35:32And even before that, I have always engaged, enjoyed and have friends and who are artists and makers and all that, and been a maker myself because I think the kitchen is, you know, I mean, talk about materials and function and making, you know, I, I made a poster once say, I make art five times a day, including snacks. So materials, uh, application of some type of temperature, hot, cold, heat, um, materials with different oils, carbohydrates, fats, proteins, uh, coaxing flavor.

36:06I mean, to me, that is performance art at its best, right? It's also the domestic space, but I haven't been trained in a BFA, MFA kind of way. And I think it serves me and it doesn't serve me just like everything. Um, I also came to making full-time much later. I, I, I, I have a background in food studies, um, Middle Eastern degree, undergraduate degree in Middle Eastern history and Arabic, and then look to public health and nutrition.

36:37Um, and then to me, the logical thing was, uh, plant sciences cause that's what was there. So, um, and so what motivated me, the core motivation for this food studies journey, there's a couple cores, it's number one thing, but human rights, food is a human right, food is healing and land because whether you're indigenous cultures or non-indigenous cultures, agriculturalists,

37:07human rights are fine, but if you can't access the land, then you're being cut off from the capacity to live your life, right? And so, um, I think that's the core of my work in many ways is talking about the migration of people, plants, and ideas, often women, often domestic spaces. And the joy or the drive that I get from knowing I'm having a conversation about that all the time, um, is what motivates me, is what, like, gets me out of bed in the morning, be like,

37:44okay, there's this 15th and 16th century cookbook that I found, that I didn't find, I didn't discover it existed, that I came across, um, and I got access to the photos, and so let me play with this for a couple years. And, and that means, okay, I'm going to draw every single melanated person in these 50 miniatures. Okay, I'm going to now make linos. Amos Paul Kennedy Jr., dear, dear friend, amazing letterpress printmaker who I've known

38:15for, you know, 25, 30 years, studied with my partner. I called him up like 15 years ago. He said, I'm in Gordo, Alabama. I said, Amos, I want to learn letterpress. So he says, come on down. Um, so, uh, and then I just went down that rabbit hole, uh, cause I had a really lovely teacher. Um, and so I'm so grateful to be able to have less of a private conversation and now a public

38:47conversation through these mediums to talk about, um, domestic spaces that aren't valued, uh, the migration of plants, uh, the origin of plants, uh, how we name plants, what do we gain? What do we lose? We only know the common name and we don't know the other 50 languages. And how do I, how do I, how do I present that? Um, how do I talk about archives that are at the New York Public Library that are, there's a beautiful Arab materia medica.

39:18And then there's this beautiful Persian book called the book of wonders and creation, something like that. I have it written down, but I don't have it memorized. And so there are beautiful representations of plants. How do I show those plant representations? Well, I put them, I make them blue and I put them on porcelain. Um, so I'm digressing, but I'm, I'm sharing with you these days and it might change what kind of makes my heart go bumpity bump in terms of what do I want to put out there and how do I want to put it out there?

39:48And then it's also immigrant legacy.

39:53It's, uh, my parents came to this country in the fifties. They went back to Pakistan. Then they came back again in the sixties because of the 1966 Immigration and Nationality Act, um, naturalization or Nationality Act. And, um, and so, you know, they had multitudes in them. They had layers in them. I have multitudes in me. And when I say that, what I mean is before 1947, before the partition, before the creation

40:25of, um, a nation state there, a different type of empire, a different type of hegemony existed. But there was a fluidity for a certain, perhaps class or caste of people that allowed them to be in Persia, that allowed them to be in Central Asia. There's a whole cultural conversation that's happening there. And, um, and those multitudes are in me, right? They're in me if I choose to explore them. If I choose to study Persian miniature painting, if I choose to look at mobile miniature paintings,

40:59if I, um, choose to look at the environment outside my window, which is very New England, where there are a lot of stone fruits, a lot of the stone fruits that we value come from Central Asia and Persia. But we say as, as American as apple pie, um, but apples come from Central Asia. So I can talk about the multitudes that I embody. And the reason why I do it is number one, it's really fun because you get to explore this beautiful, rich world.

41:29But equally important is I find, um, when young, when I mentor young folks and I mentor a lot because there's the colleges around her. So I've had a whole bunch of these wonderful studio, um, assistants. And when I talk about my work, this is what attracts them because if I give myself permission to speak what's in me or where I come from or what I want to focus on, um, I'm giving them permission to do it too, uh, to speak, sing, and shout, you know, to, to, to, to, to be

42:04expressive and it doesn't have to be, it can be through anything, but be expressive, own it, claim it, talk about it, bring it into the room. Um, so I digressed. I went all over the place.

42:19No, I, um, well, the, the, one of the last things you said is where, where I want to go is just what is, what does it take for you to have studio assistants? What is the umbrella that you are planting that, that they're coming in under? Well, what's happened is I gave, uh, there's a wonderful art historian at, um, Amherst College. Her name is Yael Rice. She's a historian of South Asian and Islamic art. She actually studied with Walter Denny, who I studied with when I was at Smith College,

42:51who's an amazing Islamic art historian. Um, and she had me talk in her class. And, uh, and so this lovely young woman, Bela Achaibar, said, uh, do you need help? And I was like, I, yeah, I do need help. And she was persistent. Um, and so she came and started working with me about six months after I met her because I had a residency and then she was away. And so they come for, you know, a couple hours a week. Um, but in the summertime, what's really lovely is a lot of these students get paid internships.

43:25So I can have someone work with me for eight to nine weeks full time and we can document all the work. We can do some writing exercises. They can help me drill holes in the porcelain knives that I didn't drill holes in before I made them. And so now we're going to figure out how to do that. Or, um, they're going to help me cut out stuff or help me package or, um, help me organize the library or help me go through all the photographs and put them in order.

43:56And, and that's just the work. But when you're mentoring for me, it's, it's the conversations around that about, um, their classes, what they're learning, their relationships with family or friends or new relationships. Um, and I feed them because that's part of my practice, you know, just like you feed them. You feed them, you feed them. And so she either could, she either was shown or she could sense that you would be a good

44:35host and mentor. That's why. Well, what I presented, what I presented in the class was the prints. And, um, she said, you know, I saw myself. She said, I saw myself, you know, because I'm talking about the Arab, Asian, uh, East African ocean worlds. So you got to hear a little bit more than the first half of the full conversation with

45:11Sarah to hear the whole episode. You just need to go to patreon.com slash the conversation pod. And for as little as a dollar a month, ideally more, which will give you some perks. You can get the full episodes, including all the bonus full episodes going back for the last couple of years, at least. So, uh, yeah, I wanted to talk to you about the virtual cafe, as I mentioned in the intro, which happened about three and a half weeks ago. So the way I structured it, we talked about the couple of projects that are in the works,

45:49potentially one of them is a documentary series. I have mentioned that before. I will go ahead and reveal now that the documentary series is about the late artist, Jack Goldstein. Uh, it was inspired by, it's a project inspired by the book, Jack Goldstein and the Cal Arts Mafia, which was put together by Richard Hertz, a former chair at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena. And, uh, I did a lot of recordings with some of those people and people who are not in the

46:20book and want to turn them into a documentary, but haven't been able to find funding. So I'm thinking of putting snippets of that footage out as sort of mini episodes, uh, probably in the Patreon feed. So that's something I talked about. The other thing I talked about is the advice podcast, the intrepid artist, which if you are a musician or a artist who makes little ditties on your guitar, keyboard, or synthetic, uh,

46:53music instruments and would like to contribute a theme song for the podcast, please do reach out. Otherwise I may be using Doug Burns band, the Red Dons, one of his samples that he offered. Um, but if you're up for it, do reach out. But apart from the theme song, I still am in need of your questions for the advice podcast, preferably something that is of good or great concern to you.

47:25And you can set it up with a little bit of a personal story. You can do so anonymously, even though that sounds very particular, very personal. You can leave a message on the Google form, theconversationpod.com slash intrepid. And that will take you to a Google form where you can anonymously put your question in. If you don't mention your name, you can make it as generic as you need to, but just give

47:55a little bit of a background context for your question. Makes it a much richer question, makes it a much richer episode. Um, that's what I'm looking for, for that. We, we have several, but we need many more questions. So, uh, if you want to be more upfront, you are welcome to leave a voicemail. That is the gold standard of questions for the show. Cause we get your voice as well as your question. And, uh, you can do that through the URL is speakpipe.com slash theconversationpod.

48:33That's where you can leave a voicemail. Or if you want to do it by phone, you can use the conversation podcast hotline 424-256-6618. The other thing that is probably the most exciting is the top five films that I had people share in the virtual cafe. I think that's a great way to get to know people or at least have a great table topic. And it's a decentralized form of our favorites.

49:07Because if we did a thing about our favorite art exhibitions or performances, very few of us would have access to the same shared experience because of our decentralized locations. So with film, we all have the opportunity for the most part to even with fairly obscure films to see them, you know, on video on demand, et cetera. So yeah, it's like I said, it's more decentralized, more universal as far as consumption experience

49:38and so on. So all that said, if you would like to share your top five films, I may be including them in future intros or outros to the show. Priority to Patreon people, but do feel free to submit whether on DM via Instagram or ideally via email, theconversationartpodcast at gmail.com. So reach out with your top five films. I'm very curious to know what they are. Find out what kind of overlap there is out there.

50:11And yeah, maybe this will be a thing. Maybe it won't. But let's give it a shot, shall we? All right. I think that's it for now. I hope you enjoyed that. And I hope you consider becoming a Patreon supporter so you can listen to the full episode and support the show at the same time. Otherwise, I hope you are well despite the shit show that continues for the foreseeable future. All right. Thank you very much for listening. And I will talk to you again soon. Until then, for real.

50:42Ciao for now. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye.