Community Kitchen Dinners:
Recipes for Survivance
@ Marz Community Brewing | 3630 Iron Street, Chicago
Join us for a series of community kitchen dinners, made from recipes for survivance, storytelling, and solidarity.
Survivance, as writer Gerald Vizenor explains, is an active sense of presence over absence, the continuance of stories, and the refusal of mere victimhood; in those dinners we are showing cultures that practice survivance through the continuance of recipes from their homeland gathering around a dinner table.
Inspired by artist projects responding to the imperial occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan including Enemy Kitchen and Combat Kitchen, Community Kitchen Dinners will feature conversations around food, memory, migration from regions the US/Israel empire is currently devastating.
Two seatings each night:
5:30 - 7:00 PM + 7:30 - 9:00 PM
Sliding scale ticket sales $25-$100 will go 100% toward causes selected by each host.
More details, menus, and good meals with good people coming soon.
Presented by Public Media Institute, in collaboration with Marz Community Brewing.
Monday, August 31st - KURDISH DINNER
Led by artist Belzar Aradini and Beimal Yazdanparast
Hosted by sisters Beizar Aradini and Beimal Yazdanparast, this dinner centers on what it means to cook as part of the Kurdish diaspora. Raised in Nashville, Tennessee, home to one of the largest Kurdish communities in the United States, their family arrived as refugees after fleeing the Anfal genocide, Saddam Hussein's genocidal campaign against the Kurdish people in the late 1980s. This displaced hundreds of thousands of Kurds and forever reshaped the lives of Kurdish families across the world. This same campaign was carried out with chemical weapons and enabled in part through U.S. support for the Iraqi regime during that period.
The Kurdish people are the world's largest stateless nation, with more than 40 million people living across present-day Turkey, Iraq, Iran, Syria, and throughout the global diaspora. Today, Chicago is also home to many Kurdish residents who continue to sustain their language, traditions, and culture, far from their ancestral homeland.
Growing up between two languages usually means constantly translating…not only words, but customs and ways of being. There is both loss and possibility in that space. Some recipes survive almost unchanged; others are reinvented through what is available in new landscapes and what is passed onto the next changing generations. For Beizar and Beimal, cooking is a way of holding onto tradition while allowing it to evolve and transform. Please join us.
This dinner’s proceeds will be donated to The Lotus Flower, an NGO who support women and girls in Kurdistan to build sustainable futures beyond conflict and displacement. The Lotus Flower was founded in March 2016 in direct response to the 2014 ISIS attacks on the Yazidi community in northern Iraq, one of the most devastating humanitarian crises in the region's recent history. Nearly a decade later, The Lotus Flower continues to operate across the Kurdistan Region of Iraq with 120 locally hired staff, eight permanent women's centers, and fifteen mobile teams. If you would like to learn more, please visit thelotusflower.org
Photo Credits: Sandra Oviedo
Monday, July 6, 2026 - CUBA
RECIPES FOR SURVIVANCE- FOCUS ON CUBA
Cena Cubana por la paz y contra el bloqueo
As Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez pointed out, the White House is constructing, “without any legitimate excuse, day after day, a fraudulent case to justify the ruthless economic war against the Cuban people and eventual military aggression
The indictment of Raul Castro sits alongside everything else Washington has deployed against Cuba in recent months: a fuel blockade that left the island with no diesel and no fuel oil reserves as of May 14, a visit from CIA Director John Ratcliffe carrying Trump’s ultimatum for “fundamental changes,” a $100 million aid offer conditioned on political concessions, and at least 25 U.S. military surveillance flights near Cuba’s coast since Feb. 4 — the same platforms used before the Jan. 3 kidnapping of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. The United States is escalating its imperialist threats against the sovereign nation of Cuba, calling for direct military intervention and regime change. We condemn these acts of aggression and calls for an international campaign to counter this escalation.
Proceeds from the dinner were donated directly to Global Health Partners, please consider donating below:
https://ghpartners.org/
About Global Health Partners
Global Health Partners is launching an urgent drive to send desperately needed surgical sutures to Cuba’s dedicated doctors. The current shortage is delaying and cancelling surgeries. Please join us to rush sutures and other lifesaving supplies to Cuba as it confronts unprecedented shortages of vital surgical supplies.
Program Organizers:
HotHouse is a non-profit cultural project that is celebrating its 40th anniversary in 2026. It is one of the country’s premiere presenters of Cuban culture and organizes annual delegations to the Jazz Plaza festival in January. It is a producer of the film “The Other Guantanamo” to be released later this year.
The Chicago Cuba Coalition is the primary force for local activism and solidarity with Cuba. Among its many successful achievements, the coalition was key in passing City and State referendums to normalize relations. Projects include: organizing delegations to Cuba, coalescing with labor, religious, academic and business interests to build support for the Cuban people.
Photo Credits: Sandra Oviedo
Monday, June 15, 2026 - IRAN
Led by artist Hesam Salehbeig
Artist Hesam Salehbeig prepared an Iranian meal for the second gathering of COMMUNITY KITCHEN DINNERS.
“Iranian cuisine, much like Persian carpet weaving, is fundamentally a folk art shaped within the homes of ordinary people and carried through generations by women across cities and villages. Although exceptional examples have emerged from aristocratic households and royal courts, the essence of Iranian cooking remains rooted in domestic knowledge, memory, and care. Professional cooking differs not in method, but in scale: the chef reproduces the cooking of household women with larger quantities and greater equipment, always attempting to reach the depth and precision of home cooking.”
(Ketab-e Mostatab-e Ashpazi by Najaf Daryabandari and Fahimeh Rastkar, 2009.)
For the second dinner, Hesam drew from recipes gathered from Iranian women throughout his life, alongside recipes preserved through the work of researchers and archival projects across different periods and regions of Iran.
A portion of the proceeds were donated to support a family whose home was destroyed during the war in Iran. Many families have been displaced or deeply affected, and this gathering hopes to contribute, even modestly, to the rebuilding of their lives and communities.
Hesam Salehbeig (they/them) is an Iranian, Chicago-based interdisciplinary artist and curator. Rooted in diasporic memory and Iranian mystical cosmologies, their work explores embodiment, self-transformation, and self-authorship through immersive and durational forms, often creating dialogues between Eastern cultural traditions and contemporary performance practices.
Photo Credits: Sandra Oviedo
Monday, June 1, 2026 - PALESTINE
Led by artist Linda Abdullah
Artist Linda Abdullah collaborated with Cedars Palestine Kitchen to share recipes from her homeland Palestine. Food recipes in Palestine are often passed down through generations of women in the family. Each region in Palestine will prepare the same dish in their own distinct way, which adds the unique flavors shaped by land offerings and geographies. Linda has collected recipes from Palestinian women in her life and compiled them in her own home-cook notebook, sharing two recipes in the first gathering of Community Kitchen Dinners.
Proceeds from the dinner will be split between two initiatives:
Support Sudki’s field kitchen operating in Rafah.*
https://donorbox.org/gaza2026/fundraiser/amer-abdullaHelp bring the artworks of 14 Palestinian artists from Gaza to Chicago for Linda’s upcoming curatorial project, New Forms of Survival**, opening November 7th at Watershed Art & Ecology.
https://www.gofundme.com/f/bring-gazans-artists-voices-to-chicago
*More about Sudki’s Kitchen:
Imagine feeding 2,500 dignified Palestinians a day right now in the heart of southern Gaza.
We can achieve this with your support by building and supplying a new field kitchen in Rafah - a lifeline amidst desperation - brought to life by a collaborative vision between Chicago based Palestinian restaurant, Cedars & not-for-profit charitable organization, Pious Projects.
Cedars’ founder Sudki Abdullah was a displaced Palestinian refugee. His life mission was to feed as many human beings as possible while alive.
We carry his torch into Gaza, silencing hunger & reigniting hope. In his honor, we name this Gaza field kitchen “Sudki’s Kitchen.”
More information about Pious Projects of America: Pious Projects is a not-for-profit charitable organization founded in 2014. Pious created a way for people to take part in humanitarian charitable projects from all over the world. Pious collaborates with like-minded non-profits across the world, most recently with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, as part of the “For Mama” campaign, which works to alleviate the maternal mortality crisis globally.
Please consider donating directly to the cause:
https://donorbox.org/gaza2026/fundraiser/amer-abdulla
**More about New Forms of Survivance exhibition:
New Forms of Survivance
Curated by Linda Abdullah & Faten Nastas Mitwasi
@ Watershed Art & Ecology, Chicago
November 7 - December 5
From November 7th to December 5th, 2026, New Forms of Survivance will be exhibited at Watershed Art & Ecology, shedding light on a group of Palestinian artists from Gaza. This exhibition features -some of the same artists from the 2024 exhibition Landscapes from Under the Rubble at Co-Prosperity, which foregrounded immediate responses to destruction.
Three years after October 7th, these artists are now forcibly dispersed; some of them live across the diaspora, while others are internally displaced within the Gaza Strip. New Forms of Survivance, however, reflects not only genocide and loss, but also sumud (steadfastness), resilience, and transformation.
Survivance, as writer Gerald Vizenor explains, is an active sense of presence over absence, the continuance of stories, and the refusal of mere victimhood; the Palestinian artists in this exhibition practice survivance through art. As artist Basel Almaquosi reflects, “I draw in order to remain awake as a sensitive human being; the war does not erase my dignity and humanity.” Working with whatever materials are available—diluted spices, pomegranate, charcoal, tea, coffee, or hibiscus—these artists produce expressive marks on modest surfaces, like school notebooks and ruled paper. The drawings function as a form of diaristic testimony from within a war zone. When the artist and professor Suhail Salem began sharing daily sketches on Facebook, he described them as “our only window to tell the world: we are still alive.”
New Forms of Survivance celebrates the work of Palestinian artists and offers a platform through which they share their stories, reflect on their fears, and express their dreams. Against genocidal violence, the artists from Gaza continue to pursue creative expression as a testament to their love of life. The artworks offer alternative ways of seeing, manifesting the evolving relationship between the artists’ lived realities and their creative practices over the past three years.
Please consider donating directly to the cause:
https://www.gofundme.com/f/bring-gazans-artists-voices-to-chicago