Sarah Kazmi,
Cooking at Sea: on the Dastarkhān/دسترخوان,
2025
Operating across languages and cultures, Cooking at Sea: on the Dastarkhān/دسترخوان explores how words move and change, and act as vehicles of memory. In Sarah Kazmi’s performances, the dastarkhān — a long cotton cloth that is spread on the ground as a surface for sharing meals — becomes a way to think about language as a space of gathering and exchange.
Kazmi’s work considers translation as something that is not only linguistic but also cultural and embodied. By moving between Norwegian, Urdu, and English, the performance highlights words that shift in meaning across time and space. These transformations reflect histories of migration, where traditions and languages adapt to new environments rather than simply disappear.
Through sound and spoken text, Kazmi’s project asks what emerges in the space ‘in between’ languages. She refers to the term Bāṭin (Arabic for ‘inner’ or ‘hidden’), pointing to meanings that are not immediately visible but that may be revealed through forms of encounter. Kazmi suggests that borders — real or imagined — can blur, transform, or perhaps even collapse when language is shared.
Enacted at the Fisheries Museum in Sandviken during the opening two days of across, with, nearby, Kazmi’s performance acts as an open invitation for us to consider language and the construction of meaning as a living, moving practice, something that is shaped and continually reshaped by collective use and memory.
Sarah Kazmi (b. 1990, Karachi) is an interdisciplinary artist and writer whose work addresses the relationship between food, language, and politics through a practice of research and visual production. Engaging with writing in visual, rhythmic, poetic, and performative modes, she creates sound, video, installation, and performance works that often unfold through encounters with local communities in specific contexts. Kazmi holds an MA in Art and Public Space from Oslo National Academy of the Arts (2019) and lives and works between Oslo and Karachi. She has presented work at Intercultural Museum, Oslo (2024); Raven Row, London (2024); and Coast Contemporary, Lofoten (2023). She is also a policy advocate for Verdensrommet, an artist-led support network for non-EU/EEA creative professionals in Norway.
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