Co-Unfolded: Lessons from a Layer Cake

Co-Unfolded:

Lessons from a Layer Cake:

What the Arts can Learn from Hospitality.

by Haneen Mahmood Martin

I was invited to participate in ‘To Shoulder’—Co-’s inaugural symposium that took place at Composite: Moving Image Agency and Media Bank in late 2023. I was thrilled by the opportunity to challenge care as an overstated concept within the arts. The opportunity ‘to shoulder’ something is a responsibility that is tiring, often time consuming, and rarely rewarding. It is also, however, an essential chance to show love in the way I am most accustomed to—the kind where saying “no” would never cross your mind. I learned this first from my grandmother, who’s own mother earned the title of Mak Besar (Big Mother) of Kuala Lumpur in the 1950s.

This responsibility and privilege is something I have often heard, seen, and witnessed arts organisations claim to do, without the full understanding of how to action it. So, with this in mind, I present to you my anti-manifesto. An “anti-manifesto”, because labelling things as such removes it out of the hands of the everyday. This is a model of something built around the nine layers of a kuih lapis.

I encourage you to peel the layers away, snack on them, and see what takes your fancy.

I chose the kuih lapis, something I made and served for the original talk, as a guide to shape this model as it is a representation of continuing my culture outside of Malaysia. I used a combination of recipes I’d found online and tested them repeatedly, until it matched my ideal memory. If I had really wanted to impress, I’d have used one of the many recipes my grandmother passed down to me in my early teens. That didn’t feel like the right approach in this instance. I wanted to use this opportunity to grow, learn, and celebrate a live-ness, a present-ness, in relation to being part of a culture.

I was born in Kuala Lumpur. My great-grandmother is Sophia Abdullah. I don’t know much about her as she died quite young. She was a mother to eight, including, notably (to me) my grandmother, Ruby. I have learned a little about her through archived newspaper articles online, framing to me not only the impact my family had upon my culture and country, but also highlighting the rapid growth of Malaysia, between my great-grandmother’s time and my own.

In these archives, I found a short sentence about her house on Pahang Road in what’s now considered the Kuala Lumpur CBD, how she volunteered for the Red Cross, and how people would come over all the time to eat her food. What I do know to be true is that she taught her children how to have an incredible eye for detail when it came to hospitality, charity, and making room for others. For me, this summarises how I came to be, and how I see the essentials in life now.

My grandmother and her siblings also followed this line of hospitality. They found ways of feeding people in any way they could. I find it essential to preface here that this was in-part due to their relative economic privilege. In-part due to having lived through colonial occupation and war, where food sources were unreliable. They were equally proactive in feeding one another when times were tough, and when times were plentiful.

My Nek Chor, my grandmother’s oldest sister, had the home we would congregate in on the first day of Eid every year—a tradition bound by generational respect and maintained by the sheer excitement of eating her food. It was a complex level of hospitality, made possible across many homes through the employment of live-in helpers, usually from Indonesia or the Philippines. They maintained the home and safeguarded special recipes, making specialty dishes so well that it became hard to distinguish the quality of their cooking from that of their employers. I have firm memories of most of my grandmother’s sisters safeguarding their own recipes, as closely as they safeguarded each other, while maintaining fabulous open homes for Eid—a highlight of the social calendar.

My own family home, which sat near the border of Petaling Jaya and KL proper, was equally open to visitors. Each day I felt the privilege of greeting an array of people from all races, faiths, and lived experiences, that would walk through our big wooden doors and spend time with us. Through this, I learned how to weave the accommodation of other’s cultural dietary requirements with the traditional needs of hosting. I would watch my grandmother’s encyclopedic knowledge of each guest sift down to my uncle Mudrik and my mother, and witness guests being ushered immediately to the places on the dining table where there were ample meals accommodating to the needs of Kosher, Buddhist, Hindus, and the rest. I learned young that this type of hospitality worked best when guests had no room to question whether they were welcome. They were made to feel welcome the second they walked into our house.

This hospitality does not allow for a blanket approach—it is specifically catered to you.

I learned from my grandfather that he had allowed people to barter to afford medical care from him. Having lived through an economically unstable childhood, he understood that people were reluctant to accept charity. This respect and care from him continued long after he stopped practicing as a GP. I would watch people come to the house with fresh seafood, and my grandparents would always ensure they were invited in to have tea and cakes with them.

In my own practice, and as someone who is displaced from their home country and these generations of learnings and culture, I rely on these memories (and the act of creating new ones) as the lens by which I see the world. Each day I live with the reality that I can never return to this life in the same way. I have detailed only some of my stories, leading up to this point. I have seen how we can homogenise the experiences of the Other in the arts, assuming a one-size-fits-all approach to hospitality and inclusivity within our spaces. Throughout my career, I have watched as people have swung open the doors, wiped their hands clean, and wondered why nobody new finds their way inside. Echoing the actions of my grandparents, I am interested in asking how we can actively welcome people in?

When we moved to Australia, we had to find new ways to celebrate Eid without the lavish open houses we had previously known. My parents created our own version, one where family and friends, without the shorthand of what we were trying to celebrate, were able to join us. We had great company with open hearts and minds. To meet them halfway was to promise good food, jolly attempts at recreating my grandmother’s punch, and great conversation. It has its own place on the social calendar these days.

In my early adulthood I would hop between embracing this world and the late nights of Adelaide’s bar and club scene, where I never felt out of place. The time taken to make a new friend in the toilets, understand someone’s favourite drink, or intuit the right time to sprint to the dance floor, shaped a perfect night in another third space. I have since spent my career trying to find ways to bring that joy into the arts, but a lack of a shared language can restrict this.

I propose that if we get to know each other’s differences, and the differences within ourselves, we will better understand how to care for others. The arts must consider itself part of the hospitality industry—we are in service of those we come into contact with.

What could it look like if we worked within our means, instead of with overtly broad strokes? What could it look like if we acted now, instead of waiting for everything to be perfect? What could it look like if we promised to try and try again, learning each time from our actions for others? And what could it look like if we kept inviting people back in?

I put to you now, nine layers of hospitality to match the nine layers of my kuih lapis. To be repeated, tested and tweaked, over and over again. Something that can be refined, over time and in your own way.

Where do you come from?
Who are you?
What do you have?
What can you do now?
How will you do it?
How can you do it again?
Why do you want to do it?
Where do you find the ways to keep going?
The return: the invitation to do it again

I hope that this anti-manifesto, this collection of silly words drafted over a year ago, and brought together now in the midst of Ramadan, when I have not had enough sleep, is useful for you. That it may be a catalyst for movement and a tool to reject exclusionary practices. As I look towards another Eid, practiced away from my homeland without the same level of community and support, we keep finding new ways to provide hospitality. Perhaps the best thing we can do is to just keep moving forward, when action feels overwhelming.

List of images:

1) Kuih lapis (layer cake) made by Haneen

2) Central KL, with the Mara building in the background which housed one of Haneen's grandparents' clinics

3) Pouring rose syrup - a mainstay of gatherings in Malay homes - for guests of Haneen's Sayang Sayang Supper Club
Images courtesy of Haneen Mahmood Martin.

This work was originally conceived for Co-Discourse: A Symposium — a public program produced by Co- as part of the

To Shoulder...

programming of 2023

Co-'s To Shoulder... programs and this online edition of Co- Unfolded are possible thanks to generous support from Yarra City Arts through City of Yarra.