Njokobok Bar

with Youssou Diop

Exhibition: After Rain, Diriyah Contemporary Art Biennale

Curators: Ute Meta Bauer, Anca Rujoiu

Technical data: NJOKOBOK furniture, cold pressed juices from traditional Senegalese recipes, newly developed drink – Habbat al Hamra, storytelling sessions

Furniture produced at Fellesverkstedet, Oslo. Apron for NJOKOBOK BAR designed by Dinu Bodiciu. Artist assistants: Runa Carlsen, Linn Lervik, Siv Bugge Vatne, Klara Suša Večovnik. Commissioned by the Diriyah Biennale Foundation for the Diriyah Contemporary Art Biennale 2024.

Action research: What Makes the Neighbourhood? Talk by Apolonija Šušteršič and Youssou Diop with Ahmad Angawi, July 5, 2023. Biennale Encounters: What Does it Take, What Does It Do To Cook Together? Sharing Session, September 9, 2023.

Storytelling sessions: Opening Storytelling Session by Kholud Najjar – RIWAQ, Palestine.

Press text

NJOKOBOK Bar is a social platform for gatherings and community storytelling sessions over juices and Senegalese tea throughout the duration of the Biennale. The bar serves four types of juices free of charge to Biennale visitors: ginger, hibiscus, baobab, and turmeric, all having medicinal properties. The menu is complemented by Senegalese tea, which is particularly refreshing on the cool evenings of February and night-time gatherings during the month of Ramadan. Several key ingredients for the juices and tea — ranging from ginger to hibiscus and mint — are sourced from the AlZahrani farm in Diriyah, which played a key role in developing this project and fostering engagement with local producers. The eight-metre-long table, chairs and colour of the interior were designed by Šušteršič. Although specific to Diriyah, elements of the design reference one of the artist's earlier projects, the Bonnevoie Juice Bar that she created in 1998 for Manifesta 2 in Luxembourg.

During Ramadan and the opening and closing weeks of the Biennale, the bar is activated with a series of storytelling sessions inspired by Arabic traditions of vernacular literature and the history of the hakawati — "storyteller" in Arabic — people who used to go around coffee shops and souqs to tell stories and engage audiences in their tales. A continuation of the sharing sessions taking place as part of the Biennale Encounters, NJOKOBOK Bar invites different hakawati to share stories of belonging and migration that make visible the layered and diverse social fabric of Diriyah and Riyadh.