Egyptifying Petit Fours and Preserving Coptic Traditions by Andrew Riad
April 2023
Andrew Riad created an atmosphere in the kitchen which became a cross between a Coptic church and his mother’s kitchen. Participants created Petit Fours, an Egyptian cookie with a colonial legacy. By allowing everybody to sculpt, shape and colour these cookies freely, the act of decolonisation and resistance began. Kevin Jones furthered this by prompting participants to think about resistance and decolonisation whilst personifying chosen foods in their writing.
About Andrew Riad
Andrew Riad, within the culinary realm, turns to food as an artistic and poetic medium to [re]imagine and resurrect. He is also Kahk you’d serve to break fast with on Eid day: Coptic, sweet, and close to crumble.
Andrew is a Coptic Nubian Egyptian artist and poet exploring the intersection of poetry, research, and law. His projects are research-based and -driven, but they also mythologize life in an attempt to configure an opportunity for play and imagination. For him, language is the experience of sound and ritual, symbol, and gesture. As such, it is a site of resurrection and imagination.
Riad is a graduate of New York University Abu Dhabi (May, 2022) with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Literature and Creative Writing and Legal Studies. He is currently a recipient of the Salama Bint Hamdan Al Nahyan Emerging Artists Fellowship and a recent alumnus of SAMT Alternative School. His work has been shown in Alserkal Avenue (Dubai), Bayt Al Mamzar (Dubai), New York University Abu Dhabi, as well as published internationally in Mizna Arab Art Journal Summer Issue 23.1, including other regional and international titles.