Sufra Dayma/'to bless the meal' artist recipe book by Faye Matloub

In March 2025, Faye joined Art Gene as Real Barrow Artist in Residence, marking the start of her project, Sufra Dayma, or its English interpretation, to bless the meal.

As part of the project, Faye invited members of the Furness migrant community to share and celebrate memories of their homelands, exploring both local and international food cultures and traditions, creating 'memory palates', making collages, exchanging stories and recipes, and learning to cook dishes like falafel, baklava, fuul, and Papy’s amazing curry! 

Faye’s project culminated in the creation of this artist-designed recipe book which featured in Art Gene's exhibition 'Remember Nature: Intra-actions' in October 2025. The exhibition was curated by Art Gene’s as our contribution to an England-wide art project, Remember Nature, 2025.

About Remember Nature

Remember Nature 2025 is an ambitious new staging of the visionary art project initiated in 2015 by the celebrated artist Gustav Metzger (1926-2017), and curated by Andrea Gregson and Jo Joelson.

Remember Nature 2025 marks the 10-year anniversary in partnership with 17 regional arts partners across England, culminating in a nationwide Day of Action on 4 November 2025. It will bring people together, through a programme of cultural and artistic public interventions, to act collectively to face the climate and nature crisis.

The partner organisations are:

Art Gene, Baltic Contemporary (Gateshead), Castlefield Gallery (Manchester), De La Warr Pavilion (Bexhill-on-Sea), FACT (Liverpool), Hauser & Wirth (Somerset), Ikon Gallery (Birmingham), KARST (Plymouth), Kestle Barton and CAST (Cornwall), Kettle's Yard (Cambridge), MIMA (Middlesborough), Homotopia (Liverpool), Hatton Gallery (Newcastle upon Tyne) Serpentine (London), Tate Modern (London) and Turner Contemporary (Margate).

Remember Nature 2025 builds upon the initial Remember Nature in 2015 and Metzger’s call to action, which urged arts professionals and students from all disciplines "to make a stand against the ongoing erasure of species" and create new work to ‘remember nature'.

We could view the cookbook as an act of remembering nature, in the sense that the shared knowledge and experiences in the cookbook represent a reconnection to food traditions and our ‘roots’, all deeply tied to the land. Faye's work demonstrates that food is not just about sustenance but that it is also closely linked to identity, memory and resistance.

About the Artist

Faye is a British-born Iraqi artist and chef based in London. In 2023, she graduated from Central Saint Martins with a degree in Sculpture. Following her studies, her artistic practice gradually transitioned toward the medium of food. As her work moved beyond the confines of the studio and onto the plate, she began to define this evolving body of work as Edible Mediums.

Edible Mediums encompasses a diverse range of formats, including workshops, community engagement projects, supper clubs, and written work. As a second-generation Iraqi, Faye uses food to engage with different communities, learn from them, and conduct research on the preservation of migrant identity - emphasising the importance of creating accessible language for first- and second- generation immigrants like herself in a creative context.

#RNGM25