A WOMAN'S PLACE? Robin Kahn in conversation with Stephanie Bailey

Robin Khan

Preproduction for The Art of Sahrawi Cooking installation, 2012

dOCUMENTA(13)

Image courtesy of the artist

In 2012, Robin Kahn worked with a collective of women from Western Sahara to create The Art of Sahrawi Cooking, an installation and series of events for dOCUMENTA(13). The project was inspired by a book Kahn produced: Dining in Refugee Camps: The Art of Sahrawi Cooking (2010), the fruit of Kahn's experience in the refugee camps of the Western Sahara as part of the ARTifariti festival in 2009. The project stems from the idea that the word haima means both 'family' and 'tent' in Hassanyia, the Sahrawi's Arabic dialect. For dOCUMENTA(13), Kahn transplanted a tent – the centre of Sahrawi social life – from the sands of the Tindouf Refugee Camps in Algeria to the soil of the Karlsrue Park in Kassel, producing a project exploring the idea of space and the sense of community produced within that. In this interview, Kahn discusses the roots of the project and how it relates to her practice as an artist.

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