The Diary of An Isolated Cook

These illustrations were commissioned by Sharjah Art Foundation as part of the second iteration of the publication Corniche. Corniche can be purchased here.

Nahla Tabbaa explores tensions between the urban and the organic, the beautiful and the grotesque. Sensitive to the self-organising agency of materials, she adventures into the world of immateriality and the intangible through experiments in alchemy and combining elements from the organic and inorganic. Her methods are intentionally slow-paced, meditative, and labour intensive. Tabbaa’s practice permeates strands of her everyday life to heal and harmonise her otherwise fast-paced life.

Tabbaa works with different mediums and subjects such as urban research, the culinary arts, ceramics and drawing. She earned a Master of Arts in Curatorial Practice from the Bath School of Art and Design in 2012, and a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Sculpture from Central Saint Martin’s College of Art and Design in 2009. She previously led and developed the community program at Sharjah Art Foundation, and currently develops education projects independently and in collaboration with institutions such as Art Jameel, Warehouse 421, and the Beacon House National Trust University. She is also a culinary navigator, podcast host and ethnographer with Frying Pan Adventures (a tourism company specialised in food and walking), the co-founder of The Alchemy of Dyeing, (an alchemical dyeing educational platform), Forsa School (a critical and professional program for artists), and Daftar Asfar (a sketchbook publishing collective).