Flatbread Library

After a visit to Pakistan in 2019 with his father, Sameer Farooq started a project around the political significance and social role of the tandoor. A tandoor is a large, thick clay oven whose roots can be traced back over ten thousand years and is commonly used in the areas we now know of as South Asia, the Middle East, and North Africa. Sameer was most impressed by the scale and scope of bread production: in larger cities like Lahore in Punjab, there was a rich dialogue around food and the court, as was inspired by the Mughal period. In Peshawar, in the north of the country (annexed later to India then to Pakistan during Partition), people were more inspired by Afghanistan and flatbread travel over the Silk Routes.

Sameer found that women were the traditional bakers of bread – their bread-making was guided by symbolism and ritual concerning every detail, carrying with them intergenerational knowledge not only on the bread but of the community and family. Sameer remembers stories from his father’s childhood: “At that time, there was no television, so the tandoor was a form of evening entertainment. There were a lot of discussions, debates and fights around the tandoor.” Not only would all the town’s news come to the tandoor, but it would also be delivered house to house along with the bread. In this way, we can understand that flatbread was the way in which oral information travelled from home to home, across borders.

Sameer’s work continued back in Toronto, and it is now presented as part of a long-term research project commissioned in collaboration with the Agnes Etherington Art Centre (Kingston) and presented as an installation at the Auto BLDG at 158 Sterling Road for the Toronto Biennial of Art. The artwork, titled Flatbread Library (2024), is made up of a flatbread curtain and map of Toronto, presenting various flatbreads procured from diverse bakeries across the city. Flatbreads are a form of unleavened bread; this could perhaps be traced back to the origins of bread, before yeast and starters were combined with flours and fire to bake these delicious foods.

Flatbreads can be used as a plate for other sauces and dishes, or torn and used to scoop up food. It can also be eaten in rolled up form, carrying foods within it. Based on collected flatbreads of Toronto, the artist has created his installation to trace multiple paths of bread migrations across borders, questioning how these borders are conceived and created. He also investigates the routes these flatbreads follow into the city of Tkaronto/Toronto and how this staple food forges connections between the people and places they have left. Sameer says that “flatbreads are the materials that defy many of the conventions of traditional archives (official ways in which we document history and information)” because bread is ephemeral, perishable and meant to be eaten. “Bread can teach us a great deal about exchange of ideas and challenge the idea of borders around cultural authenticity.”

The leftovers from the Flatbread Library were turned into stamps and used to make this monoprint poster. Ink was applied to the scraps, extending the life of flatbreads that otherwise would have been discarded. These bread-made images translate the ever-shifting nature of flatbread into visual form on the front of the poster; on the back, Sameer includes “Bread Stories,” which introduces and ties together the migration stories of 11 different flatbreads (Flatbread Library includes all 26 flatbreads) found locally in Toronto bakeries, with origins abroad.

In leaflet form, Sameer also shares an intimate conversation with Rima Zughaiyer and members of her family, who own and run Palestine Bake Shop in Toronto. Sameer and Rima, along with her mother Majida, her sister Lina, and her father Wafiq, chat about embodied knowledges of intergenerational recipes and techniques in the making of traditional flatbreads, bread as sustenance and as resistance here in Canada, and through times of cultural erasure and war in nations abroad.