I was born in 1968, in Tehran, to French parents who had left their small provincial towns to discover the world. As my father was a cultural attaché, I got a childhood on the move: Iran, Algeria, Burkina Faso, Lebanon, Norway. Then, as an adult: Canada, France, Mexico, India. Today I live in Vienna,Austria.
In Norway, around my 11th year, during the cold and rainy winters, I started baking, drawing, and writing recipes for the local kid’s newspaper. With the years, my interest in drawing and painting grew and I studied art at the university. To finance my studies, I took upon cooking jobs.
After my studies, in 1996 I worked as a graphic designer for a magazine in Montreal and exhibited my art works in galleries. In 2000, I moved to the south of France where I worked as interior designer and pursued my painting activities.
In my early forties, I started organizing cross-over evenings at my studio with live music, reading, performance and cooking. That’s how cooking came back into my life as a creative activity, not just as a side job for paying bills.
When I moved to Vienna, in 2012, I had no interest in cooking at a regular restaurant, I wanted something more versatile, less repetitive and more “out of the box”. I started by offering my services as a flying cook.
I improvised lunches in creative office spaces, I cooked in tents for the artists of the Nomadic Village (an art residency on the road) in England and France. I created three-course dinners inspired by the texts of contemporary French poets at the poetry festival “Poema” in Nancy, France. As these venues did not have cooking facilities, I designed and built my own portable kitchen, it was first called the Synaesthetic Suitcase, later I renamed it the CookCase.
The name came from my interest in the phenomenon of synaesthesia, a condition in which someone experiences one sense through another: being able to smell sounds or taste colours, for example. Participating in these venues brought me to create links between text, visual art and taste.
Finally, I came to the conclusion that to really experiment with food, to come up with interesting combinations of ingredients to create my own recipes, I needed a space to cook with the adequate kitchen equipment.
That’s how I started to cook at the offices of Vice Austria where I prepare everyday fresh vegetarian and vegan meals. Whenever I cook, either for office lunches or caterings at special events, I take inspiration from culinary traditions around the world and turn them into my own veggie and vegan cuisine.
Every time I think of a new recipe, I start to draw. Doing sketches helps me select the aromas, and imagine the final visual outcome. It is not only about illustrating the recipes, but conceiving them while drawing.
In Norway, around my 11th year, during the cold and rainy winters, I started baking, drawing, and writing recipes for the local kid’s newspaper. With the years, my interest in drawing and painting grew and I studied art at the university. To finance my studies, I took upon cooking jobs.
After my studies, in 1996 I worked as a graphic designer for a magazine in Montreal and exhibited my art works in galleries. In 2000, I moved to the south of France where I worked as interior designer and pursued my painting activities.
In my early forties, I started organizing cross-over evenings at my studio with live music, reading, performance and cooking. That’s how cooking came back into my life as a creative activity, not just as a side job for paying bills.
When I moved to Vienna, in 2012, I had no interest in cooking at a regular restaurant, I wanted something more versatile, less repetitive and more “out of the box”. I started by offering my services as a flying cook.
I improvised lunches in creative office spaces, I cooked in tents for the artists of the Nomadic Village (an art residency on the road) in England and France. I created three-course dinners inspired by the texts of contemporary French poets at the poetry festival “Poema” in Nancy, France. As these venues did not have cooking facilities, I designed and built my own portable kitchen, it was first called the Synaesthetic Suitcase, later I renamed it the CookCase.
The name came from my interest in the phenomenon of synaesthesia, a condition in which someone experiences one sense through another: being able to smell sounds or taste colours, for example. Participating in these venues brought me to create links between text, visual art and taste.
Finally, I came to the conclusion that to really experiment with food, to come up with interesting combinations of ingredients to create my own recipes, I needed a space to cook with the adequate kitchen equipment.
That’s how I started to cook at the offices of Vice Austria where I prepare everyday fresh vegetarian and vegan meals. Whenever I cook, either for office lunches or caterings at special events, I take inspiration from culinary traditions around the world and turn them into my own veggie and vegan cuisine.
Every time I think of a new recipe, I start to draw. Doing sketches helps me select the aromas, and imagine the final visual outcome. It is not only about illustrating the recipes, but conceiving them while drawing.