Welcome to Slow Cooking, a new multimedia podcast about all things food, art-making, social politics and environmentalism. This conversation with Rebecca Moradalizadeh is published in three different formats: Video, Audio and Text.

To access the other formats and episodes, simply follow this link: https://performingborders.live/commissions/slow-cooking/

Born in London, based in Porto and with Iranian ancestry, Rebecca’s multi-disciplinary work is deeply marked by her migratory experiences and often revolves around food and hosting practices. 

We start the day by going food shopping in the only shop in Porto that sells mainly Iranian produce, where we buy extra-long rice, a variety of spices and sweets, and a rare type of saffron which is more valuable than gold. We’re in for a treat! 

From there, we travel at her house, in the South East side of Porto, Campanhã. Traditionally a deeply communal area, with small, decaying houses by people long forgotten by the local council, strong traditions and a deep connection with a slower and more gentle pace of living, it is an area rapidly changing by rabid gentrification. It is because of this that we eat inside, for the loud construction works and pollution have invaded the community, forever changing it and threatening everyone with uncertain futures. 

But inside is a place of nurturing, of gentle connections and deep love for the memories we hold, and for possible futures. Together, we share space, experiences, practices and most importantly, food. 

Bom apetite 👩🏼‍🍳

Interview

Meal: Naan bread, Kashke Bademjan, Torshi, Pickled Garlic, Laboo with greek yogurt, Zereshk Polo, Khoresh-e Ghormeh

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Rebecca Moradalizadeh You have to start first. Not me. I’m always the last one. 

Xavier de Sousa Oh really. Yeah, okay. 

Rebecca Moradalizadeh So I would suggest if you want to start with the Naan and with Kashke Bademjan. That’s a kind of a dip with aubergine and walnuts, caramelized onions, and kashke. That’s the kind of a way that you could only have the sour flavor on it, and it goes really well with the naan. So I would suggest if you wanted to fill your plate with many, many things, you don’t need to be structured like that. I like to cook with lots of stuff and just eat it, you know?…

Xavier de Sousa To have everything in your plate. 

Rebecca Moradalizadeh So. Yeah, but this is what I decided to do as an appetizer so you can fill in to the taste of it, and then I’ll explain a little bit the story around it. So, yeah… Let’s destroy it!

Xavier de Sousa It. Oh, yes. 

Rebecca Moradalizadeh It’s really nice because when I do this in my events, I normally think that, well, Portuguese people wouldn’t… because they are the most common people that are in my events…. they wouldn’t like that because it has a different flavor. But it’s what they most like the most. It’s really nice. 

Xavier de Sousa So can you say what is in it?

Rebecca Moradalizadeh It’s the the aubergine, the walnuts, the caramelized onion with garlic also. Salt, pepper, turmeric… That’s kashke… 

Xavier de Sousa Nice. 

Rebecca Moradalizadeh You can start if you want to continue with the filling in the plateand then if you want, you can just decide what to eat. 

Xavier de Sousa And then what is next?

Rebecca Moradalizadeh And then I would go to Torshi, which like kind of a pickle. This one is a mix of pickles with cauliflower, carrots… it has some seeds on it and I think aubergine also. Yeah, it’s a way of the preparing this kind of pickle and it’s more mashed because it’s on a quick time, because normally when you do it you can have it like for five years or more years in the jar with vinegar, and it becomes like this, more mashed. My father normally does it, he dries all the vegetables in the summer and then he puts it in the jar. So it’s a big event only doing the Torshi. It takes a long time also because it’s like a meditative way of doing it. Cutting the vegetables, washing them, putting it to drying outside and then putting in the jar with seeds, the vinegar and then fill the bottles with it. This is one that I’ve always in my home, and at my parents house… the other one is garlic, also pickled. It’s really nice to have it. You peel it, you take the peel out of it and then just eat it like that… 

Xavier de Sousa It’s so good. 

Rebecca Moradalizadeh Yeah. That’s my favorite because, you know, people when they eat it and they think ‘oh, garlic‘ like that’s raw and strong, but it’s actually sweet. Yeah, it turns out to be sweet. Yeah. This is always on the table. And this one is a dip, I would say a cold dip. We have with with cucumber. That’s a little more common. Laboo, it’s beetroot with Greek yogurt, because here it’s the only thing that it’s more similar to the yogurt used and some mint, fresh mint. You can use with dry mint that has a different kind of flavor on it, but I like the fresh mint, and garlic and salt, and a bit of olive oil. I like to do this because it’s a colorful dish. It’s really fresh when you eat it with food when you are having hot meals. The stew, it’s heavy, and if you go and buy the little, little details off the dish are what I prepared here, it’s really cool. 

Xavier de Sousa Nice. So tell us about this (points towards the rice). 

Rebecca Moradalizadeh Yeah. So this is, a special rice. We have many, many kinds of preparing the rice. Basmati rice. This one is the Zereshk Polo. Polo is rice, that’s already cooked. So this is Zereshk, the berries. So in English, we call it, barberries. You also add onion, a little bit of sugar and then the rice is preparing different levels, so we soak it in water. This basmati rice is really long. It has a different scent and it’s really more beautiful tasting than the other that we get in the supermarkets. And we clean it in water for about… I left it in for one hour but some people leave it overnight so it depends. I washed it really well, so it takes all the this powder of it…

Xavier de Sousa Starch. 

Rebecca Moradalizadeh Starch. Exactly. So, yeah, I boil it in hot water with salt. You didn’t see the amount of salt they use. When people see me putting the amounts of salt, when I’m filling up a pan full of water and I put like loads of salt. But at the end you don’t taste like almost anything. And now you boil it for around two minutes. You can count or you can see, because that was something I discovered when I was doing my research on food, when the rice starts to boil and come out on the top, it means it’s already ready. So you’re not going to cook over the rice. You’re going to pre cook a little bit of rice and it has to be a little bit… I… it’s really difficult to explain because you know what I was saying before, that when you know, that’s already done. It’s very good.

But well, the magic of it, when it starts to come to the top, it’s already on the spot. And then you drain everything out. Then what I did for this case, this format of a cake. Yeah, you put it on a pan with olive oil. You can do with, with also yogurt with saffron on the bottom. But I put some sliced potatoes so I fried a little bit of it, then I had a bit of rice on top. Then I put saffron, I love saffron so much. I was generous with that because I really like it, you know, saffron from that was heated in hot water, so it releases all the color and the flavors. Then you just drizzle it on top of the rice. You just put the paper on top of it, and the lid. And it was like half an hour later. It could have been crispier if it was longer. The thing I do while cooking is this is a cooking with a twist.  

Xavier de Sousa And then what about this? 

Rebecca Moradalizadeh And this is the stew… Also with a twist because it’s a vegetarian version of the real stew. If it was with meat, Iranians cook it with lamb, that’s normally would cook for hours. It would be cooking for hours. This is Khoresh-e Ghormeh, it’s a lentil yellow split dish. A stew done with fried aubergine, or grilled aubergine and I added some grilled mushrooms instead. In terms of spicing, it has turmeric, the onions in the beginning of the stew preparation, and the surprise here of the taste is the lemon… that’s the dried lime. You can actually, you know, we cut it in half because we are always sharing.

Xavier de Sousa It’s an incredible feast. Thank you so much. 

Rebecca Moradalizadeh Yeah. Then at the end of this, we will have, some Persian sweets. Not made by me, but it’s really difficult to achieve that.

Xavier de Sousa Okay, of course.

Rebecca Moradalizadeh So here, please. Thank you. Yeah. Actually, this is about sharing.  

Xavier de Sousa (eats). Wow. 

Rebecca Moradalizadeh You’re going to try this, twisted Iranian vegetarian food. Because of the memories that they, they give me to my family. I was born in London. 

Xavier de Sousa Yeah. 

Rebecca Moradalizadeh My father is Iranian, my mother is Portuguese, and actually I won’t remember anything of London because I was two and a half years when we left to Portugal. We came to Portugal because my mother has her family here. It was near and a different way of raising a child. So when you are really young enough to know what to do. Yeah. So we came to Portugal. So what I remember is Portugal, of course, being raised in Portugal, but there was always something different that I felt while growing up. So I have all the connections I had physically was not with my mother’s side of the family.

My grandmother, I have a very good bond because she was always taking care of me. But there were some things that, for example, some food or some things like my father phoning the someone who was speaking in Farsi. And I didn’t realize what it was because actually I started to…. my first language was English. So my first word… well, not my language, but my first words were in English. So I was speaking in English with my parents as a kid. And then when we came here, I started to learn Portuguese because I went to school, I needed to speak Portuguese, and it was really confusing… it was all a little bit mixed for me. But then when I realized I had another level of identity coming from Iran, I didn’t realize that when I was young or at least until I could then think for me, unlike a kid for six years old or seven years old. I mean, until I realised some different things. 

Xavier de Sousa Yeah. 

Rebecca Moradalizadeh So this, this connection to Iran came little by little. I came mostly by food and by people that brought the food with them to Portugal. Because for when I was five years old, we actually went to London to do a gathering, a family gathering with my grandparents from Iran, my uncles… I have footage of that, I have video archives and I work with that also… and if you see my face, I’m really shocked because I don’t know what’s happening. It’s really new faces, new way of connecting with the body, with me actually… like, my grandfather was always hugging me tight and it was – I always say this – it was like he felt that it was the last, the first and last time he was going to be with me, and it was actually. So I have the footage with him dancing with me and it was a feast, a normal dinner with some friends and with some family. It was a complete festival of food. So food was really present in everything in these memories.

So discovering my identity came with food, and of course some archive, some photography and some people. But the food was the way of traveling. Iran traveled to me in a certain way. So that’s reminds me of my family when I was five, and I had that moment or those moments… and then whenever someone came to Portugal and I was really little at the time. My uncle came when I was already I think 7 or 8, and then my grandmother when I was 12. Then the last time it was when I was 21. So in this, procedures of coming here, they brought Iranian food, ingredients and also prepared with ingredients to make the food, because here we never found many things available. As I told you, many of these things are really precise, the Kashke, the Zereshk, but aubergine didn’t exist at the time in Portugal in the 90s… this Basmati, no one knew what it was. I mean naan, unless you made this… Well, it’s, if you want to eat it, you’ll have to do it all the time. It’s one of our practices at home, at least. So here are things that exist in the Iranian cuisine but they were unavailable in Portugal. Yeah.

So these levels of knowing this territory, came with this migration of my family. So I used to say that whenever my grandmother came, she was smelling of Iran because she kept the ingredients and these have strong smells. So you really know if someone is cooking Iranian food, and she was smelling full of of spices and ingredients she was bringing from Iran. That’s it, that’s different kind of… different memories of getting to know this identity. So the basmati rice may have been one of the first things that my father was able to do, but after the lentils, it was something he started to do, maybe more in like 2010, because then we found in the market, and he was shocked that they had this kind of lentils.

I decided to bring this because this is one of the dishes that he could do the most, to go back home, actually, and it was one of the dishes I normally use a lot in my performances because it’s something that’s not so strange to eat. So, it’s more likable. People get into it, even if it’s done with mushrooms. I don’t say anything. The Zereshk is something comes from that time that my grandmother brought some ingredients. So I don’t know if it happens to you, but whenever you taste something, you say “oh, I was really craving this, and this reminds me of this“. And this is what it feels. Yeah. And then actually, this, Kashke is something that came after I went to Iran first time in 2019, after I did the process to go to Iran.

So it reminds me of Iran already. So these are memories I have from Iran, in Portugal. And this is a memory from Iran. Yeah, the only time I was there. So, yeah, I like this because also the Torshi is something that my father used to do at home, and he has plenty of jars all the time. Always taking photographs. “See what I did?” Yeah… Come home to eat. So. Yeah, these are lots of memories. Also, this Sharbat is a cold drink that I drank the first time when I went to Iran.

I went in August 2019. It was really, really hot. I mean, more than 40 degrees during the day. Whenever we were visiting places, we had to go early in the morning, then rest in the afternoon and then go around 5-6p.m. to go some places. But there was one of the museums we were visiting, they had like a coffee shop and they were serving this drink kind of like, “oh, this is so good”. And you can also do with chia seeds instead of these things. So they really good and you can actually drink everything.  

Xavier de Sousa It does feel like a good… like I don’t know, cold tea that you drink by the sea.

Rebecca Moradalizadeh There’s one you can do also. Oh I cannot stop speaking of food… you can do it with cumber, sliced really small. Also add sugar sirup and rosewater, ice and apple cider vinegar. Yeah. Well, it’s really good. Yeah. 

Xavier de Sousa What is interesting that you talk about all this research and passion, which is amazing. Also, you keep talking about memories and how these foods are related to memories… I was wondering about before we get to talk about your specific work, I wanted to talk a little bit about like how some of these might activate some sense of familiarity to you. Related to perhaps processes that you went through in your life, or I guess of different types of relation. Right? You talked about these being the things that you learned here about Iran, the way they were helping to create memories about a place that you hadn’t been to before. Right. But then this one had a very specific kind of more direct relationship. Right?

Rebecca Moradalizadeh Yes. So it’s difficult not to speak of work, cos your work is about food right?… I started to cook in 2013, because this idea of questioning identity came after, in 2015, I don’t know even why I wanted to start to cook. It was something that I enjoyed so much. It was like, okay, this remind me of my grandmother I really was fond of. And this desire – I always say this word desire… of going to a place that you can’t go, because I knew that I couldn’t go. That’s why I did a process… I wasn’t able to to enter in Iran because of my surname. And it’s like, ‘okay, if you don’t let me, I want to go anyway through food’. And it was like trying to settle in my mind and my being “okay, I can be this, I don’t need a paper”. No one needs a paper to see whatever you are. So, it’s a process of going into the back to the memory.

I’m always jumping. My past has different pasts, different levels of past. So you have the past-past when I was two, when I was five, when I was 12, when I was 21 or different levels. I have of memories. So I was always going back and forth, back and forth to construct this memory. And I also use the word unraveling because it’s the unraveling process of getting this identity. I get lots of inputs whenever I’m just eating a food. It’s like for work purpose. I was like, okay, this reminds me of another thing. So maybe I can work about this. 

So the work has specific levels, this kind of food and related memories. But it’s also about this work that was constructing at the same time. So it started with this random trying out of food because I was interested. My father always cooked a lot, my mother too. So I had this Portuguese, Iranian and other kinds of cultural kinds of food. So home was a multicultural place, and it was important because I think it builds different minds on people. I was poor, I grew up in a small town, and I think we have a more open mind, in lots of ways to lots of things. The first time my father, for example, cooks Iranian food for everyone for my mother’s family, they hated it. They were like, “well, this is not Portuguese. This is not pork. This is not…” Yeah, you know, but they were not open to try out and to go “okay, this is actually good”. Now, they were so conservative in this kind of way of eating always the same things. So food has lots of meaning in this process.

Then in 2016 I started “okay, now I want to start a real project, that’s the LandMarks series, because it came along of the year of the process I began with the Iranian embassy, or gaining this identity, the paperwork… So it was, a way to… “Okay, I’m going to start something, as a visual artist.” Some of that was when I was already in my 25s… so I was working around 4 or 5 years since I left University, but always with lots of mixing. You (pointing towards Daniel Pinheiro) collaborated with me back then… so it was different things. Then I realized “okay, now I have here things to work with. I don’t know, I can work with this for a long time…” Yeah.

So cooking was always in the process because it’s really performative. Yeah. Cooking. We did a choreography here. So like.. The kneading of the bread… it was like this process that never came… ‘ok I’m fighting with it, I’m going through it’… this way of slow cooking, it was a really good way of understanding what the process was. This gaining of identity was also, and I never knew if I was going to get it at the end. So it was a surprise. So desire is always here, desire of going to Iran. Because I wanted to understand my some of my roots. Even some gaps I had because having food and not having a family to put a face to something, it’s a really big gap because at the time we didn’t have internet, so it was phone calls. I never knew them (family in Iran). If I remember when I was five, I knew my father was speaking to someone on the phone. Was that in America, in Australia, in Iran?… because, well, speaking English or Farsi… it was confusing to me. These gaps are still constructing, I’m still on this unraveling process. 

Xavier de Sousa I like that, because it feels like to also talking about memories but also pleasure, desire. This is interesting because food activates palates, but also activates pleasure and desire… and this desire of traveling, of going somewhere kind of activates memories that you might not even have had yet. But you imagine the possibilities, right? How is it, how is it compared to your idea of Iran was when you got there? 

Rebecca Moradalizadeh It was shocking in terms of it was so emotional, because I went when the protest ended, it was in 2019. I got all the paperwork. 

Xavier de Sousa You could only go after that. Yeah, yeah. 

Rebecca Moradalizadeh So it took four years to do everything. In the four years, my work was only food and performance related, this idea of identity and trying to find it, was so demanding and frustrating at the same time, not knowing if you ever going to go there. It was like I was… I normally say that I was sometimes used to cry for something I didn’t know, for people I never met in person. I was crying because I missed them. This idea of saudade that you use in Portuguese, of missing something that you don’t even know. It was this feeling all the time, and food was was feeling this gap. If I ate food, Iranian food, it was like filling this gap of missing something. It could sooth it a little bit… I cried a lot because of my grandfathers. I lost them, and my father for sure, in a different way. Losing someone and they are so far away and you can’t even go there. So, it was always this distance that was always hurting at the same time, and you wanted to go there to complete something of your own. This desire I always talked about.

Once I got there, I was so… it was so emotional. I tried to cry. You know, when my body is full of energy and full of hopes and desires and lots of things. I got there and I got released, my body got there, I got there, I answered, I came, it’s okay, it’s done. I’m meeting my family. I’m… and it was amazing. I have really good memories. Being there, I felt at home, even my home… I was here, raised here. But I felt uncertain because I’m talking about the more intimate relation with the family, the connections you have. Well, I visited some of the museums and I said, “okay”. Of course, you build up memories. Even if you rely on archives like photos and videos, sometimes you are just inventing some things. I don’t even know what’s real or not anymore. So at this point you are constructing these, but it’s also a mix of poetics, of real life or experiences that other have… some of the experience of my father’s diaspora.

When I got there, it was like, wow, lots of these things. I feel like home. It’s like I found out myself. I was to say, I’m half Portuguese, half Iranian. Yeah, but I don’t know if it’s half-half exactly. Yeah. I didn’t go as an artist. That was something for sure I knew, I didn’t want to go as an artist. I wanted to because I knew it would be really emotional. I photographed some things, but I kept most in my head because it was the chance to be with people, in a place, to have connections to my father. Okay, so he told us lots of stories because we went to Tehran… In Tehran we have family in this farm in Xiraz, as my cat is named after. This is a city of culture and of poets. So it was something I really liked. It was for visiting. And then in Kerman, my father is from came and we went there, and we have loads of family there.

So when we arrived to the airport, we had plenty of people at the airport with flowers and everything. I just start to cry like, I didn’t know any of them in person. I never met them in person because they were the cousin of a cousin of a cousin… And whenever someone goes to Iran, and if you travel or you go back, they do a big feast. You are invited for every kind of dinner or lunch to be integrated again. Once my grandmother used to say, as my father said, when she came to Portugal holiday for one month, and she went back again to Kerman, everyone was doing a party.

Xavier de Sousa That’s interesting, how has it impacted your work? Because what you’re describing, you’re talking about a sense of collectivity and people throwing a party for you, and you talking about integration and food and gathering as a mode of integrating in the community. I’m thinking about your LandMarks series projects, where you invited people in to table, for you to understand the processes that you’re going through. Is this sort of like an invitation to be present in a space?

Rebecca Moradalizadeh Yeah. I try to, not to recreate, but at least to show some of my memories of this, because I have them. I was telling you about when I was five, I had this gathering of food, dance, music, my grandfather singing, everything… I show some of the archives I have. Gladly, I hac people fiming at the time, so I have those archives and I try to do that in my performance too. I started to do actually the performance dinner thing and some LandMarks were a way of getting involved with the Portuguese community or whoever was living in Portugal and getting to know my roots because it has different levels, this work. It started because of the process, but also I started to reflect on my identity being raised in Portugal. So what was I facing in this process of being raised in Portugal as being Portuguese-Iranian. And Santo Tirso is a small town and everyone knew my father, and that my mother had married an Iranian man. I also had my name. So my surname is the one that says that I have a different origin also, and sometimes I received many times, actually, while I was growing up, lots of xenophobic or Islamophobic comments. I don’t practice anything, but I respect a lot. Whoever wants to, to do have their beliefs… But yes, this process was difficult, being raised in this in this small town, it was always all the time fighting “No, I’m not, a terrorist. I’m not. I’m not that, I’m not.” Well… And people, Portuguese people have a kind of a humor I don’t like. 

Xavier de Sousa Yeah. 

Rebecca Moradalizadeh That’s really… not good. So this work, it was an invitation of… If you want to talk about that, please get to know it. Yeah. Because people, they just see the media and the media just pass certain things. 

Xavier de Sousa It feels like you had an expectation, and then what you found really was overwhelmingly different, I guess. But in inviting, you are creating a different alternative in your show to what people have said in media. 

Rebecca Moradalizadeh Yeah. It was really, yeah it’s really cool because people come with another mentality. It’s completely different. They want to be part of because they know that’s going to be kind of a ritual, inviting. So they want to be part of it. I’ve shared this work, at the beginning mostly, with many people in different parts of Portugal, and it was really interesting because then you get to do this conversation, actually talk about something… and people have feelings so once they get to know my memories, my family, they get connected to that. So it’s really nice to have this perspective also, not criticizing what I was doing because, of course… well, I I can’t say it’s their fault, but very instructive from the media to think like this, and they construct their thoughts about that… I don’t know…. so yes, I wanted to do kind of an invitation where people share food. They shared experiences, more I think when I did the LandMarks #3 – a question of identity. That was the first performance in, I think in 2016, I think, or 16, 17. 

Even now the gap is not so long, I think, between 2017 and 2024. But I feel that now people are more, connected to more different kinds of food and say “oh this reminds me of something”. At the time, it was like everything was new. So it’s really interesting to see the evolution also of food training that you can have when you have multicultural people in the same place. So yes, it’s the kind of invitation to gather, to share my experience, to share my in between. I mean, the inbetween us, because I’m always in-between places. I realized some concepts that I now use or I think about, or I reflected when I read stuff, or I connect with some friends because, one thing that I struggled also a lot in the beginning was the idea of representivity… For 23, 24 years, I didn’t have anyone besides my mom or my sister that grew up with

Xavier de Sousa So you didn’t have any other figures. 

Rebecca Moradalizadeh No. In society, at school…. in the school as teachers, as friends… I don’t know, I didn’t have anyone. 

Xavier de Sousa Community members…

Rebecca Moradalizadeh Nope, no… I didn’t have family here so one of my feelings was to be alone. Feeling alone, because I was pointing these different states because of my name. Sometimes in a bad way, sometimes it was out of a curiosity. I started that text (of LandMarks) with that. That’s because of the name, it starts a conversation and it was a kind of a dialog I have on my mind, or with me. I started to have mixed feelings because of this inbetweenness. I met many friends here in Porto, like Dori, Paulo…. Melissa…. even if they are working with different diasporas, they are doing lots of similarities. So they were my representation, as in just being because I didn’t have any. Then with when I started the events with food slowly, I was advertising because I was… well sometimes it was an association, sometimes it was institutions. But people just came! Sometimes they were like ‘all ‘oh I saw there was some Iranian cooking’ (laugh)… and when you’re grieving so much, or you’re homesick, you go because if you’re not, you don’t have the food… Well, you don’t have something so often but you hear about something and just go! You just go and meet someone… and I met a lot of people.

Actually, I tell that to my father. He was here. He’s Iranian one. He speaks Farsi. I was the one… One of the first Iranians that were living here, that work and living mostly in Porto. So I met some Iranians in 2017, 18, 19. And then I collaborated with some, I invited them for some events to do some poetry or some music. It was really cool because suddenly I realised “okay, I’m not alone here”. But of course, we were spread in many cities, these different cities, but we did not have any social media, that we could connect easily. Because now everyone is on social media so you, you can have easily a connection to who is living here or not. I met, in São João da Madeira, I did a work also about food in the markets that I was invited to do. And then suddenly someone came and they were Iranian, it was a couple, with their son, and they were Iranian and they were living here for much longer than my father. 

Xavier de Sousa Oh. 

Rebecca Moradalizadeh So it’s really funny to figure out that. 

Xavier de Sousa I guess at that time there was like, no way of people knowing that. 

Rebecca Moradalizadeh No, no, we didn’t have social media. 

Xavier de Sousa Yeah. Perhaps in other contexts there would be like associations, or associação, of a specific community, but I guess when it comes to migrant communities, that wasn’t so common.

Rebecca Moradalizadeh No, no, at least I really don’t know. Even restaurants sometimes. I think there was one here in Porto. In Lisbon you have two, I think. So it really depends, this idea of opening a restaurant that’s has a theme, of the migration of a person who is, working on the place. But it’s closed, and it means something… the community doesn’t… Our society is not used to this kind of food. Now we are more aware of different types of food, but at a certain time we weren’t. If you have don’t have a bridge to connect and to invite this way of ‘let me try’… Yeah. So the work is also about that. To bring this connection on different levels. 

Xavier de Sousa Nice. It’s interesting you talk about bridge and connection because you also have that project, here in Campanhã…. What was it called?

Rebecca Moradalizadeh “R/espigar”

Xavier de Sousa Yeah, it would be interesting to know, because obviously you live here and that’s your community, right? 

Rebecca Moradalizadeh It was different. That’s until 2022, when I was working with, it was Iranian and my identity. Yeah. So this work, it was an invitation from CRL – Central Eletrica, you can see it from here (points towards the garden). It was really interesting, it actually started with my Iranian, background. They invited me to do it, and it was during the pandemic so I had to cook here (in the house). Because the pandemic changed the way of working with food – not sharing!… you know, we couldn’t do the way that people could share with each other.

So it made me realize also a different connection with a person. So I would deliver the food to them (audiences), looking in to the eye, one by one, coming to me. So everyone was with a smile, knowing something. So we had a different connection also to it, because the previous works were on the long table, on the floor. Everyone around, I was performing. They were performing while eating. I was dealing with the food, so the connections were a little bit mixed. In this now, it was more a front to front, confrontation to it. So yes, I work I did this work with them (CRL) and you realize and then they had to pick me up because I couldn’t carry everything, and afterwards they invited me to do two works.

First one was with other artists, to get to know this area of Campanhã where they are settled because they are here for many years and most of these people that live here, they don’t know that there’s something there. It’s free. You can go and just see dance or theater or musical performances for free. So it was a way of getting to know who was living here and getting to have this connection, working with them and going there, to be available. So, that was interesting because it helps, it’s helped that it was ‘R/espigar‘, that work, because it was more about the lives of who was living here. Like they did in terms of work, in terms of, you know, common things of the daily life, of their memories. We met lots of people who are around here and I was just going around the streets saying “Boa tarde (good afternoon)”, “bom dia (good morning)”, getting to know them because “I live over there”… “I’m doing this work”. People I think they get more confidence when you say “I live there”….

Xavier de Sousa They feel better connected to you.

Rebecca Moradalizadeh You know, work here because then suddenly they pass through me on the street and they go “Oh, that’s the girl who’s doing this project, and she lives there.” 

Xavier de Sousa And then they associate you as part of their community.

Rebecca Moradalizadeh Yeah, exactly. I am not a stranger coming… So it was really nice. I wrote a text also for that work. When I came here for the first time, I was like “oh my god, where I’m going to be living”, because it was a really strange place. But then this work and these people, they gave this life to this place. They gave life to my daily life also. Because now I go there and that lady who lives in that house, she passes me in a coffee shop or, it’s a different acknowledgment.

Xavier de Sousa There’s like a sense of neighborhood. 

Rebecca Moradalizadeh Yes, yes, it’s really, really cool. And ‘R/espigar’ comes after, it was a proposition because they knew my interests on food, and memories and everything. So it’s like ‘R/espigar’, it’s like, how do you, how do you say this word in English?… 

Xavier de Sousa Wait, ‘Respigar’ is an actual word?!…

Rebecca Moradalizadeh Yeah, it is ‘to collect’. 

Xavier de Sousa Oh, my…

Rebecca Moradalizadeh It’s the kind that….

Xavier de Sousa Would be a little bit of a…

Rebecca Moradalizadeh There was the film… Oh, my God, this I, I, I can’t move on without. 

Xavier de Sousa We’re lost in translation right now… Yeah. 

Rebecca Moradalizadeh and the film… it’s going to be here (in her tongue). I mean….

Xavier de Sousa It’s a beautiful word. I thought you made it up. 

Rebecca Moradalizadeh No.

Daniel Pinheiro The Cleaner?

Rebecca Moradalizadeh Yes. To clean is to collect, you know, this, whatever… objects, mostly… But this one is a more poetic thing. 

Daniel Pinheiro The re-collector…

Rebecca Moradalizadeh Yeah. The re-collector of memories… So this work is related with food, with memories. Especially with old food recipes from families. Whatever I find out. It’s more or less professional. It’s more casual, these people are more elders, so it’s like starting the conversation with an interview and talking about where they come from, if they are living here, or they came from another place. If they had this migration also, because they bring lots of… at least one of the things I understood, it’s like you build up new dishes that you took from a place, whenever someone comes from another place. 

Xavier de Sousa Yes. 

Rebecca Moradalizadeh So most of them come from villages and they add more information to Porto’s food, for example. This project is not just about Porto’s food, it is about also this collectivity of different kinds of food. It’s really interesting because we talk about whatever the procedures… One of the first questions I ask is “what was the smell of their kitchen, of their parents or grandparents”? Well, some of them say the fire because they were cooking on fire. But it’s a difficult question for an elderly person to answer to. I like to ask go to see if I can go with some questions about that, then to see the practice that they would do if they come from the countryside, if they have farms, if they have this, kind of… horta… como se diz em Inglês?… 

Xavier de Sousa Oh horta… hhhmmmm…. This part like at the end of the garden, for example… I used to have one in London, you have a little bit at the end of the garden which is like a communal, cultivation area… urgh 

Richard: Like an allotment?

Xavier & Rebecca Yes!

Rebecca Moradalizadeh That makes a difference to what they cook. So I would ask if they if they still reproduce the recipes from what their grandparents used to do, or maybe the parents used to. Most of them, yes. But I think it’s all right that I was telling you about this kind of age. I think our generation is giving up a little bit of this way of cooking, and it’s going to lose. So I think I’m collecting all the last ones. And that’s interesting of the project because it is also trying to persuade, to continue to cook something because of course, we find food in other countries that we ave many common dishes with that are they were considered poor dishes, actually, but now they are in all they are super overpriced. But this is real traditional stuff, that they used to do because it was their memories. Whenever they got that, it was like, wow, a special dish. 

So yeah this kind of dishes that nowadays we wouldn’t do, I think. One of the ladies that I really like to speak to, and I go regularly to being with her, whenever she is describing a recipe she’s like, “oh my God. This goes, this is what’s so good… my grandmother used to do. I just avoid this at this day because then you had special days also to eat food. Sunday you have this special food.” Because they were workers in the factory, I noticed that many people had specific dishes for Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. So they would cook both fish on Monday, there would be pasta, or canned sardines, for example. I always like to see something that I wouldn’t really need to do. And I want to do is write a handbook of recipes. 

Xavier de Sousa I would love that. 

Rebecca Moradalizadeh Because some of them have these recipes that it’s really, really nice. It’s like they’re always like, embarrassed because they are full of stains and everything. No, no, this is the good stuff. This is a good list because this is used. I have been using it a lot. 

Xavier de Sousa It’s alive. 

Rebecca Moradalizadeh And you’re sharing. Yes. tt was actually a friend of mine who lives in Campanhã, in São Pedro de Azevedo. She lives there with her grandmother, and mother and father. So you have three generations living there. They have this agriculture there, they are from Foz Côa, and it’s really interesting because they bring lots of the dishes that they used to cook in Foz Côa. They are… how do you say ‘cultivam’?

Xavier de Sousa Cultivate?

Rebecca Moradalizadeh They cultivate the ingredients that they are going to use, the vegetables that you don’t see in the supermarkets. So they do that, so they can create their own dishes and to go back to those memories, and they had lots of recipe books written by hand. The mother, I really love her, she says that the book was started when she was around 12, 13 for my fun because she really likes to cook. It’s an exchange of many people from the family’s recipes. So sometimes they just give the recipe and they have in the corner (of the paper) the name of it. “To whom it belongs to” or “To grandmother”

Xavier de Sousa I love this.

Rebecca Moradalizadeh It’s priceless. It’s like amazing to see those memories, you know, and then I sometimes I film their cooking. Even if you know the recipes, the ways of touching, the choreographies’ different. So it’s really nice to see. “Oh, you do this, this way”…

Xavier de Sousa Also, for instance, people that have been doing it for a long, long time… like they know it in a way that you will never know. It becomes second nature to them, and like when I try to like cook for my grandmother or a recipe that my grandmother makes, or she teaches me how to do it… the food, the taste is not the same. I mean, because, yeah, it’s a lifetime. 

Rebecca Moradalizadeh Yeah, yeah. 

Xavier de Sousa It’s an archive of a lifetime. 

Rebecca Moradalizadeh And that’s something that we could not save. The books you can keep, but everyone has a different way… Even my boyfriend says that’s his grandmother used to do Aletria, a dessert for Christmas, and his mother does exactly the same, but it’s just not the same… 

Xavier de Sousa It’s not the same. Exactly. So it cannot be. 

Rebecca Moradalizadeh It cannot be. Don’t forget we moved a lot in terms of the way of cooking. We started with fire and, the lenha – wood…. then oven fire. Yeah, that gives a completely different taste. Yes. And then you have gas… And then it depends on what type of pan… Before it was more copper, and now we have electric, more electric stuff.

Xavier de Sousa It is horrible.

Rebecca Moradalizadeh I don’t like it. I don’t like it when I cook, like, for a long time. I prefer the gas. Because then you can you can lower properly….

Xavier de Sousa And there’s some things like we have, we have these beautiful terracotta pans that we really can’t use. They came from my grandmother’s house and you know it’s pretty stunning and if you have a live flame, The food would be so much fucking better. But we have a electric hob and it’s just so sad… we can’t even fucking use them. 

Rebecca Moradalizadeh Yeah. It’s not compatible…

Xavier de Sousa Yeah, it’s a gripe. But also we’re talking about ephemeral archives, right? And in a way, it feels like both LandMarks series and R/espigar feel like an attempt to salvage some archives, some ephemeral archives.

Rebecca Moradalizadeh But it’s also ephemeral, because I mostly do performances. So there’s, something ephemeral from the ephemeral.

Xavier de Sousa Yeah, yeah. 

Rebecca Moradalizadeh So it’s like “catch this thing”… I became less shy, when I started to work. It was 2014, I started to do performance, live performance, and I was still really shy. Oh, yes. You’re part of me (to Daniel).

Xavier de Sousa Aaawww. 

Rebecca Moradalizadeh (to Daniel) I’m glad you’re here. Everything connects now!… I understood that performance was the thing I really wanted to do. I want that connection with the person. I want to be doing something real that has an end also. I know if I take photographs, I do the videos, it has a presence also that I couldn’t give because I work with smells. So I need to share these archives, not through a video. It’s funny because I used to work a lot with video and some were, well, artistic photography for fun. Suddenly when I started to do lots of work in performance and when in 22, I had an invitation for an exhibition at RAMPA at my first, solo exhibition. And I was like, “oh my God, how I’m going to do so many works that are physical” because my mind was set to performance, which was like rethinking again in terms of techniques, only techniques, but because I feel that performance is more into what I want to share. Or writing, I loved to write that text I was invited to because it was at a stage – 2021 – I was rethinking the project of LandMarks after I came from Iran. Because I thought, okay, this project of LandMarks, it was the desire to run. So now I got to Iran, so I don’t have anymore. 

Xavier de Sousa Yeah. 

Rebecca Moradalizadeh I was wrong. This is a lifetime… If I wanted to be, it’s a lifetime work. So it was a good way to have the time to write because it was “Okay. I need to settle my ideas in a writing way”, and real palpable at the same time… Well, with dinner, it is almost an hour and people keep this in their memories. 

Xavier de Sousa Yes. 

Rebecca Moradalizadeh They also have an experience of their own. 

Xavier de Sousa Yeah. Also the the food and the smells of it and the taste of it activates those memories. 

Rebecca Moradalizadeh And it creates new memories. So whenever I see someone that already went to the performance, they say ‘oh I remember this from your performance’. So it’s a new memory that I’m creating also in people’s lives. Wow. I seem, like, amazing. I what I just said is just….

Xavier de Sousa You are amazing! 

Rebecca Moradalizadeh No, it was too much like changing people’s life woo woo!! who I am?!…

Xavier de Sousa Well, but it has an impact, even if momentarily. I think it’s interesting because a lot of artists say this because it’s like when you have performances that involve food, people will always remember it because it’s a situational thing, but also it’s you engaging with all your senses at the same time. So it actually situates you a bit better.

Rebecca Moradalizadeh Yeah. It’s also, asking for them to perform because they’re sitting on the floor. When I was doing that first for the works,they took their shoes off because they are not going to put shoes in front of food. 

Xavier de Sousa Yeah. 

Rebecca Moradalizadeh So it’s also a different way of of being and we are all together. So I don’t want to say you are also performing here because I normally I introduce, do a little introduction, at the beginning. So people are comfortable. It’s nice to just bring some of that for a little bit to what they are coming to. And I would say you are, you are part of the performance. 

Xavier de Sousa Yeah. 

Rebecca Moradalizadeh But yeah, it’s really nice… People have many comments at the end, that they were not used to, for example, going alone… because I had some people going alone to these events because normally you can go for concerts on your own. Nobody’s going to bother you. But when you go for dinner and going alone to, like, full of the people around the table, people just say “I met so many people”. Only because suddenly I don’t know who is giving me the rice, then who is giving, who is giving that to me… It’s like an exchange and suddenly everyone is talking. And it might because of the work, they have a sense of community also. Well, I would like to go to one of my performances. 

Xavier de Sousa To experience. 

Rebecca Moradalizadeh I’ve never done that at all. I realized that I was doing this invitation, but I was never sitting down as part of the performance. I was always thinking about the food.

Xavier de Sousa Time you prepare, you also during the performance.

Rebecca Moradalizadeh Not during. So for the performance, everything is done. In this format when 30 people are in a performance, and are part of the performance, people get really angry if you don’t give them food in time. So I hope today is another example of that. So no, I have everything prepared. It takes me like three days, to go and shop for things because, if it’s important to. I know where the things are, but sometimes I have to go to other districts, or cities to cook

Xavier de Sousa The people know what it takes for you to be there?

Rebecca Moradalizadeh I talk about that. Yes, because I like to talk. I like to, during the performance, I do my action and maybe at the end, when everything already has been eaten… but I’m talking about the process, what they are eating, what they are experiencing, not about what I’m doing after, but a little bit so they get to know me quite a bit better.

Xavier de Sousa I think, with heritage and, migration and processes of adaptation, which, internal. Most of the internal processes that people don’t see this sort of like internal labor that we do to adapt or to be accepted, or to or to be part of the community. This is not recognized as labor but there’s a lot of labor that happens within that, right? And if you’re talking about like, it took three days to cook for a project that you’re going to share food with people who came to gather with you, but you were the one doing all that labour, you’re talking about migration and belonging and collaboration, I guess… But people don’t recognise this as labor they expect you to have it all ready on time. I think there’s an interesting correlation with that and experiences of migration and adaptation, personally. 

Rebecca Moradalizadeh Yeah, it’s interesting to see that at that point. I cannot see all the time what’s happening in the room. Well, things are happening. But I was, I was saying people mostly they are compassionate with things, they are not expecting that kind of a restaurant-like service you are paying to. That’s why it’s really nice to do this… I have already people helping me getting out of their places and with an “you need to do this” attitude, and people feel like they see someone. They really get interested in this process, and they come afterwards to ask “how they do this. How do you do that?” Because they want to try to do it. So yhis migration comes from different territories, from different places, and so then they want to reproduce at home, and when they take with them the recipes migrate. 

Xavier de Sousa Oh absolutely and I think is also part of them wanting to connect, wanting to relate. But even if they don’t, you might relate to the experience that you’re sharing.

Rebecca Moradalizadeh Yeah. 

Xavier de Sousa Yeah. 

Rebecca Moradalizadeh It’s funny, I just remembered that last time I did this other performance, in Setubal, this other girl that was part of the performance, she was also drawing and it was part of the event. She really loved this food and she asked me for the recipe, and I gave it for her, of course. And then she wrote to me “Rebecca, it’s a disaster”. But it was really funny to have this connection, because that’s why I like to share. In this text I wrote there are two recipes people can be able to do, and I want them to share with me. What have you reproduced there? What’s you produce there is related to the memory you had from the thing that you tried when you were in my performance. So trying to the this relation is really funny. 

Xavier de Sousa So what did your kitchen smells like when you’re growing up?

Rebecca Moradalizadeh That depends because I’m in between places. Sometimes it smells something more because we have more ingredients, all sorts of spices because actually my father, he was the one who introduced lots of different dishes, at home. So curry was always there, even though it’s not part of the Arabian cuisine. Curry…

Xavier de Sousa Was that something that you like in London, for instance, the curry?…

Rebecca Moradalizadeh I not sure, I have to ask him because I don’t know if it was something that he got used to when he was living in London, or if at some point they would eat something… 

Xavier de Sousa Some excellent curry houses in London, damn. Yeah. 

Rebecca Moradalizadeh Yeah. Dill, mint, basil… in terms of herbs. The fresh ones. My father used to bring some seeds, actually, from Iran or from London, because we even had it here. Radishes. It has a really good smell. Sumac. I mean, the sumac in the rice?  

Xavier de Sousa That’s nice. 

Rebecca Moradalizadeh But whenever my grandmother came or someone Iranina came, it was the smell of saffron. Persians up front. That’s really a particular smell. And, sudsy also…, that’s, I didn’t do it here because I was afraid of not finding in the shop, and I was very offended. So that’s why. Or Ghormeh Sabzi, that’s a stew with lots of herbs. So you have three of four different types of sabzi – sabzi means green.

You have different types of preparation. So you have one for the rice, and you got sabzi polo, Ghormeh Sabzi for the stew… Kookoo Sabzi, its kind of a fritata mixed with these herbs… Ash Reshteh is a kind of a soup that you use the way also, and the caramelized onions, a stew with lentils and this greenery, herbs. So they’re they have different types. So for each dish, they have different types of mix of herbs. It’s a lot with the Ghormeh its really fun because I realized that I have access now to all of the herbs whenever they have in the shop, and I have some in the cupboards and I know which one is that my grandmother smelled of. Or really similar. But I know that it was Ghormeh Sabzi. It was a stew, because she used to do and it was the smell. It reminds me of her. Well, because she prepared at home. Normally you buy it, but you can prepare the fresh herbs, wash them, dry them and cut them. So she was smelling of that when she was preparing. And you have strong flavors like coriander, parsley. Chives. Fenugreek. So you have many, many different types…

Xavier de Sousa Wow you remember so well.

Rebecca Moradalizadeh What’s good is that you can convert into vegetarian because at least the stew, they’re full of vegetables also. I think for me, of course the meat is lovely because it gives a taste to the stew. But you can reproduce into vegetarian version easily because the spices actually get you there. Yeah. So my kitchen, I think it was when it was more Iranian, it was smelling of that. Portuguese… Well at home we never ate much pork meat when my mother used to do some feijoada. But she used to do that homemade because we don’t eat all the fats and all the things, so it was more meats, you know, rather than all the parts of the pork… I can’t, I couldn’t eat it….

Xavier de Sousa Feijoada is really heavy. 

Rebecca Moradalizadeh But I really love the, the, the earthy cuminhos (cumins). 

Xavier de Sousa So it seems like it’s always constant new construction in your identity. 

Rebecca Moradalizadeh Always. 

Xavier de Sousa And obviously we’re in Campanhã, which is a place that is constantly changing and moving with the gentrification… You are talking about and your projects with the community that you’ve connected with and you found on this quite beautiful wealth of recipes and kind of, you know, ephemeral outcomes that we’ve been talking about. I’m thinking about that and about how you can harness all of this and maybe think about, like food does, which is a great activation of memory but also activation of possibilities, you know. Thinking about what will your kitchen smell like in the future? 

Rebecca Moradalizadeh Yeah, that’s a challenge. I hope there’s still smell. I think it will add a smell of spices. Yeah. That’s for sure. Because even when I was not cooking a lot, this Iranian food, and I was living on my own already, but everyone who was there was thinking of spices and at the end of the dinner or something. So I think that’s something I think it will be happening, but I don’t know.

What’s this, identity going to be, related to? Because there’s always a desire, I’m all I already want to go again to Iran at least one more time, because I have lots of first experience at the moment. I wouldn’t go, but because of what’s happening. But I want to go there because it’s like a new desire. I got to know I have taste. I have mentioned that I didn’t want to be an artist, even though my work after this solo exhibition I had was a reflection of all of that experience. It was called Behind the Veil. So it was another ‘figuring out again’, yeah… or so being here in the West sometimes also, being raised here, you create some preconceived, or prejudice, when you are outside. So it was good to go also to find another way. Okay. You have many things that can work to, to find this identity. So I met new people from the family. I got lots of information, like the food …So it’s it’s nice. And I have this desire to go there again. So today, well, more, related to it. Yeah, I was I had this experience for one, one only. So I want to really go there again but I understand that’s this process is always changing. I’ve always planned new memories off of things, of course. But, the reflection of the work on myself is always changing. So I always have new information. If I read something, if I get to know someone. And for me, it was important for example, for the past two years and since the protests (in Iran), something, happened here, we also had here in Porto. So it was worldwide, and I got to know many of the community and even new community here in Portugal. And as I saw that they were doing, organizing, some protests, I went with my family, we went we help out some of the things, and we got to know a little bit more. Then my identity… Searching this identity now, searching this identity. It’s growing in a different way. So now I want to grow and I actually, I’m going to start a PhD this year. 

The research I proposed is to research of an identity, from the Iranian diaspora. So I’m trying to search this identity that’s not only on my own, only on my memories, but it was my memories of my father and my family, and also related to the families of this diaspora, of the different diasporas. I’m always in this different place, because I’m in this in-between place of being a Portuguese Iranian that’s here in Portugal. I’m saying as a foreigner, as my last name is Iranian, I’m not seen as Portuguese. I don’t know why… then in Iran I was seen as Portuguese.

So displacement, actually. and it’s a different level of displacement, from these people I know from the diaspora have because they are Iranian, that they migrated to Portugal. They have a different experience of mine. I wasn’t raised there. They weren’t raised here. They don’t have my experience of being like these two nationalities, and being confronted by that. But we also have similarities, sometimes as it relates to prejudices or sometimes related to people wanting to know who are we. Or people wanting to get to know us better but we don’t know what we want, we are or who we are. And it’s really interesting to find these connections. So, so that’s my research for the next four years. 

Xavier de Sousa Wow. That’s right. 

Rebecca Moradalizadeh So that’s a small future. 

Xavier de Sousa Yeah. 

Rebecca Moradalizadeh And I think I will be cooking a lot. So I can invite you more times to come here. 

Xavier de Sousa Please do.

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BIOGRAPHY

Rebecca Moradalizadeh (b.1989, London) is a Portuguese-Iranian visual artist, performer and art educator who lives and works in Porto, Portugal.

She is currently a PhD candidate in Fine Arts at the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Porto. Has a MA in Art Studies – Museum and Curatorial Studies, a degree in Fine Arts – Multimedia from the same institution and attended the Erasmus Program in Fine Arts Context and Practice at Sheffield Hallam University in Sheffield, UK.

Since 2010 she has been developing her artistic practice exploring performance art, video art, installation, photography, drawing and gastronomy, focusing on issues such as identity, gender, migration, territory, memory, family, archives and traces. In 2015 she began the ‘LandMarks Series’, an ongoing autobiographical research project related to her Iranian origins. As part of this project, in 2020 she received the Reclamar Tempo (1st edition) research grant and an artistic residency opportunity at the Paulo Cunha e Silva Campus promoted by the Teatro Municipal do Porto; in 2022 the photographic diptych ‘LandMarks #3. 1 – the process’ is selected by the Projeto Aquisições – PLÁKA to be part of Porto’s Municipal Collection of Contemporary Art and is presented in the exhibition ‘Derivas e Criaturas’ at the Municipal Gallery of Porto and that same year she presents ‘Behind the Veil’ a solo exhibition curated by Melissa Rodrigues at Rampa – Porto.

Between 2023 and 2024, the collaborative project ‘Seh Khak – Três Terras’, created with the artists Roxanna Albayati and Golara Khalilinejad, won and was supported by “Criatório”, a grant from the municipality of Porto for the creation and public presentation of a performance and exhibition at CRL-Central Elétrica and Espaço MIRA (Porto).