The Devil’s Recipe, Marwa Benhalim

The Devil’s Recipe is a collaboration between Andrea Nones-Kobiakov and Marwa Benhalim - a playful view of the nonsensicality within political discourses. Mundane everyday objects, actions, ingredients, and utterances emphasize the redundant and useless nature of propagandistic speeches. The reality in the spoken words is mixed to create new fictions, proverbs, idioms, and linguistic manipulations highlighting the absurd illusions of power and stability we regularly are made to believe. Based on remarks by Hugo Rafael Chávez Frías at the 61st United Nations General Assembly, 2006 and remarks by Muammar al-Gaddafi at the 64th United Nations General Assembly, 2009.

Marwa Benhalim is a Libyan/Egyptian artist and curator based in Cairo, Egypt. Her interdisciplinary art practice employs language, mainstream culture, and objects as a tool to collapse and contentiously resist oppressive powers. Her work utilizes text, sculpture, food, sound, video, and collaboration in multimedia installations to reveal how power systems proliferated and established tools in shaping, directing, and dominating social and political thought and action. As an artist and a curator, she constantly explores new mediums, spaces, and ideological constructs to create works and exhibitions. Benhalim’s curatorial practice engages with artists and thematics that untangle these systems with exhibitions in unconventional spaces, where art isn’t necessarily the main focal point, to form new ways of addressing and engaging with significant societal issues. Her curatorial projects include Scaffolding a Familiar Epoch, by artist Yasmine El Meleegy in March 2021. As well as TOKEN, by artist Aya Tarek in December 2021. She is the co-founder of Attempting Abla Nazira with artist Moza Almatrooshi. The platform engages women working in creative intellectual and service fields by cooking, writing, and reflecting on food in relation to cultural production, gender politics, and regional socio-economics. In 2022, she launched the "Switchboard Project," an experiment in care, comradery, and collaboration that includes monthly gatherings for cultural practitioners to share their work and a curated residency program. She is the co-founder of the "Cairo Art Book Fair" an annual art book fair that celebrates the diversity of publishing practices in the SWANA region. Benhalim holds an MFA from Southern Methodist University, TX, a BA from the American University in Cairo, Egypt, and a Foundation Diploma in Art and Design from the University of the Arts, London, UK. She has participated in exhibitions in Mexico, Egypt, Lebanon, the USA, Italy, Spain, the UAE, and Morocco.