For over three decades, artist, architect, and educator Apolonija Šušteršič has shown a longstanding commitment to social and spatial practice in contemporary art. Šušteršič’s projects are embedded within communities and take shape through a constant flow of exchange between different constituencies. The title of Šušteršič’s recurrent projects Suggestion for the (Next) Day (2000–ongoing) is reflective of her dedication to explorations of present-day living environments as a means of producing alternative possibilities for the future. Education is integral to the artist’s practice, and she is the founder of the MFA program, Art and Public Space at the Oslo National Academy of Arts. In 2016, Šušteršič and chef and community activist Youssou Diop started the long-term project NJOKOBOK, initially in Slovenia and Senegal and then in Norway. Meaning “You are welcome/We share it” in the Wolof language, NJOKOBOK is a restaurant and a community space in one of Oslo’s rapidly changing neighborhoods.

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 during the night-time gatherings of 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-meter-long table, chairs, and color 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 1992 for Manifesta 2 in Luxembourg. During the Biennale exhibition, the bar will be activated with a series of storytelling sessions inspired by Arabic traditions of vernacular literature and the role of the hakawati. Hakawati means “storyteller” in Arabic and describes people who go around coffee shops and souks to tell stories and engage audiences in their tales. A continuation of the sharing session that took place as part of the Biennale Encounters, NJOKOBOK Bar invites hakawati from different communities—Palestinian, Senegalese, Indonesian and others—to share stories of belonging and migration that reflect the layered social fabric of Diriyah and Riyadh.