Ode to Shwarma

Room III · Media

The Sauces

Four media. One canvas. Your shirt. Every great shwarma is a collaboration between the meat and whatever gets poured on it, and these are the collaborators.

Four works, applied liberally

Tahini poured in a thick ribbon over a plate of grilled shwarma meat.

Medium I

Tahini

Sesame, lemon, garlic, water. Poured.

The foundation. It goes on first, it goes on generously, and it settles into the grain of the bread like primer on a canvas.

Sesame, pressed pale,
the quiet one in the room,
soaking through the bread.

Bright yellow amba splattered across a charred pita and dripping off the edge.

Medium II

Amba

Pickled mango, fenugreek, turmeric. Splattered.

Loud, sour and permanent. The Iraqi-Jewish condiment that turned a sandwich into an event, and every white T-shirt into a lesson.

Mango, fenugreek,
sunset in a squeeze bottle.
Nothing stays unstained.

Close-up of a man's face, lips and beard smeared with green schug, a tear on his cheek.

Medium III

Schug

Green chili, coriander, cumin, cardamom. Smeared.

Yemenite heat in a small bowl. Applied sparingly by the cautious, and by the spoonful by everyone else.

Chili and green herbs,
a small bowl of beautiful
regret, spooned on thick.

White garlic toum oozing from a folded shwarma onto a dark wool sleeve.

Medium IV

Toum

Garlic, oil, lemon, salt. Whipped white.

A cloud that follows you home. Lebanese in origin, universal in consequence.

Whipped garlic, white cloud,
soft as a promise, and yet
tomorrow, they'll know.

A Note on Stains

Every stain is a signature.

We don't frame the clean shirts. We frame the ones that went through something. If you leave this exhibition with amba on your cuff and tahini on your chin, the work has done its job.

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