Noura Alhariri
I use food, plants, and space to position Palestinian cooking as a practice in world-making. Food is held as a site of evidence: a sensory means of tracing preservation, separation, longing, and care. My work moves through fermentation, writing, tending and growing on lands big and small, foraging, photography, ecological and urban research, communal meals, and heritage recipe collection.
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Yimkin
food, plants, photography
1. seen/unseen installation
2. YIMKIN: family recipe archive
3. SEED dinner #1, The Greenhouse Project at UCSC
4.
olive harvest in Jordan, 2024
5.
grief and grapevines reading, LAX Microfest
6. garden + seed projects
design, art direction, research
7.
sumac chili oil labels
8. OSU guest lecture: color + client identity
9.
studio matter, print + digital design
10.
apogee, creative direction
11. Gresham, OR urban planning case study
12.
emergent work/play, architectural capstone
13. sustainable mass timber puplication + modeling
14. architectural graphics
15. sustainable windscreen geometry + modeling
Seen/Unseen Installation
2025
In this pantry space, many ancient partners are naturally rejoined: seasonal produce and preservation vessels, bacteria and salt, grief and soil, play and nourishment. Where agriculture is the function of cultivation in space, preservation is positioned as cultivation in time. Drawing on the traditional Arab practice of “mouneh” - stocking a root cellar with preserves and fermented foods during abundant harvests to ensure survival in leaner seasons - each product contains ingredients from food gathered or foraged near the hosting farm, combined with traditional Palestinian preservation methods.
Where needed ingredients could not be found, they are substituted with site-specific foods, like unripe blackberries for caper buds, or noyaux from plum pits for almonds. Each preserve has undergone a process of transformation that suspends it in an independent timescale and delays its loss, holding it in a form that can be carried by us into the future.
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YIMKIN: Family Recipe Archive Book
2025
A recipe book archive of my Palestinian family’s traces, dislocations, and memories in ingredients; of emotional eating and bittersweetness; of food as a translator and cooking as practice for everything else. I’ve collected around 140 of my recipes, and my family’s recipes, that have been cooked over our three generations of being displaced from Palestine.
Inherited and altered recipes are used as evidence of Palestinian survival, grief, and world-making. In every recipe, there are presences, absences, threads of what has made it to me, and negative space that admits to my family’s removal. A portion of recipes are orally dictated from living family members, given to me how they have always been given.
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SEED Dinner #1 with The Greenhouse Project, UC Santa Cruz Meal
2025
In partnership with The Greenhouse Project and their structure on the UC Santa Cruz Farm, this communal meal was part grapeleaf rolling workshop, partly an afternoon spent learning from grapevines. Artist Dima Masbout created prints from grapevine charcoal and led a charcoal creation demonstration. Florals by Naomi, music curated by Zo Shay.
Olive harvest in Jordan Photography, writing
2024
Photography and writing documentating Palestinian heritage practices in exile, with my elder, Umm Omar. Harvest shared with
Umm Omar in her 80th year and 70th olive harvest, Novemeber 2024
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Grief and grapevines, LAX Microfest Reading
2025
Reading performed at LAX Microfest, excerpted from Yimkin.
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Garden + seed projects Asstd. fermentation, cooking, photography, soil research, mycology, growing
2025
Sumac chili oil labels Design
2024
Label design for sumac chili oil, created for fundraising. Arabic typeface by Zayd Lahham.
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Oregon State University Guest Lecture, Fashion Design Class Research
Summer 2019, Fall 2019, Summer 2020, Fall 2020
Repeat guest lecture in DSGN244 - Color Innovation at Oregon State University, invited by Dr. Marilyn Read.
This presentation was created to introduce design students to using color in working with clients, utilizing color in brand or personal identities, and the role intuition and sensory perception plays in color selection. Uses the work of Sophie Calle, Aleksander Macasev, branding agencies, environmental designers, and artists.
Environmental and experiential examples, including Chefchouen in Morocco, wayfinding and signage, visual accessibility.
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Studio Matter Print + Digital Design
2023
studio matter was an architectural, furniture design, and branding studio located in new york city.
As a visual designer and creative strategist on their team, I advanced and standardized the graphics for essential client-facing collateral like RFP templates, studio literature, and branding guidelines. I also progressed their brand identity through motion graphics, video editing, e-commerce for their custom furniture, and brand direction.
Apogee Brand design + creative direction
2019 - 2021
Apogee was an indie candle company started by women of color bringing the scents they treasure into the world. This project included logo design, brand identity development, branding design, packaging design, copywriting, web design, and marketing strategy.
Under my creative direction, the brand reached bobby berk (of queer eye fame)’s list of favorite Etsy products, was featured on the front page of Etsy, and was stocked in independent boutiques nationally.
With Liz Erban on product photography + collaboration on art direction, and Mady Maszk on illustration.
Gresham, OR Urban Planning Case Study Research
2019
The guiding inquiry for this research-driven urban planning studio was “what does a suburb look like without cars?”. the case study city was Gresham, OR, a suburb of Portland, OR. in partnership with stakeholders from the City of Gresham, a protocol was developed for the use of microtransit, automated vehicles, and pedestrian-only streets in residential areas.
Unused right-of-way is reclaimed as recreational zones and taxlot additions over a transitional period.
A patchwork of greened spaces is created by reassigning reclaimed roads as parks, plazas, forage zones, and playscapes. the new addition of these communal spaces, and the removal of driveways, access roads, wide right-of-ways, and other automobile-based infrastructure recenters suburbia around community and sustainability rather than the commute.