What’s Cooking, Baby?

In my small town, there are simultaneously two art exhibitions, recently inaugurated, that take off smoothly from the kitchen platform, quickly gather altitude, then go on to glide smoothly, occasionally hitting some turbulence, get back their rhythm and then make a perfect three-point landing.

Since when has Cooking become the flavor of the day for the art community?  A long time, I am told. I remember printmaker-painter Rini Dasgupta Dhumal, an accomplished cook herself, was planning to put together a recipe book that would be a collection of the best dishes prepared by the many different artists she knew and was close friends with. I don’t think that plan saw light of day, but it had occurred to her which is important. I read somewhere how M F Husain ate just a bit of everything served at mealtimes, whether frugal or regal, his advice being never to gorge on anything, no matter how much you enjoy or have liked a particular dish, and always get up from the table never feeling fully satiated. There will always be another time, he maintained.

Kaizad’s curated dinner last week. Photo by Gargi Sinha.

Last weekend, I was at a curated dinner by Kaizad Modi, a talented apna-Barodawala chef, who had put together a fabulous Parsi meal centered around mutton. Kaizad is loosely associated with the Ark Gallery, opposite BIDC, Gorwa, a spot of brilliance in that otherwise ordinary suburb. The Ark building has a nice café with a kitchen that used to be managed by Kaizad (before COVID) and served fresh snacks and baked products as Kaizad’s industrial bakery is also nearby. Once COVID restrictions were relaxed a bit, Kaizad used the Ark’s enclosed but open-to-sky courtyard to serve small family gatherings – birthdays, anniversaries, get-togethers. Now, he sometimes organizes these weekend sit-down curated dinners, for say 25 persons, and announces them on his Insta where interested persons can book in advance or come directly to the venue hoping enough ‘sit down’ places are available! Last Saturday evening was one of those days.  

But it also happily coincided with the exhibition, At the Kitchen Table, that had just been inaugurated on Friday evening at the Ark Gallery in one wing of the same building, the exhibits spilling over into the café as well as the basement car park. Curated by Reliable Copy, a publishing house and curatorial practice for artworks, projects and writing by artists, founded in 2018 by artists Nihaal Faizal, Sarasija Subramanian and Stuti Bhavsar, this exhibition looks at ‘how food has historically been – and continues to be – inscribed through various conventional formats, as well as the channels and platforms by which it circulates as material, trace, memory, and culture.’

In this process the exhibition brings together a thoughtful selection of cookbooks, videos, artworks and archival documents, from across the world. So certainly, the interested visitor must plan to see this exhibition with adequate time as it takes a while to really savour the ‘dishes’ on offer and ‘digest’ the often cryptic, sometimes subliminal, otherwise direct messages ground into the masalas that go to create the exhibits. Very considerately, the curators have placed each book (and there are almost 20 of them) on a chair and the viewer can sit on it and go through the books comfortably and at leisure. Same with the videos where benches are placed strategically and conveniently.

Now you may wonder – there are millions of cookbooks and, these days, thousands of cookery shows/videos -- how can an exhibition encompass all of these or even do justice to a fraction of the same? But the research premise that is the foundation for this exhibition is clear and precise in its intent. While the larger focus is on food-related artworks and books that feature recipes by artists or food projects undertaken specifically by artists (Les Diners de Gala by Salvador Dali, 1973, The Kitchen by Studio Olafur Eliasson, 2016, The 1Shanthiroad Cookbook ed. by Suresh Jayaram, 2020,  Writing Recipes by Rajyashri Goody, 2016 and ongoing, Artists’ Cookbook by The Museum of Modern Art, 1977, Artists & Recipes by Abby Lloyd, 2020,  The Futurist Cookbook by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, 1932), some of the other cookbooks are in the nature of representative styles in which such books have been written over the years.

The Chair and the Book, ideal partners!

These include Samaithu Par (Cook & See), Parts 1, 2, 3 by S Meenakshi Ammal, 1951, one of the early books offering step-by-step guidance to cooking for new brides; Path Pani by Mrinalini Bordawekar, 2019, a collection of the most-loved recipes from the kitchen of the author, published for distribution amongst close family and friends (this kind of compilations are becoming increasing popular these days with the ease of digital printing and sharing over email and WhatsApp!);  Esther David’s Book of Rachel, 2006, that intertwines a story of a Jewish woman living alone, with a number of traditional Bene Israel Jewish recipes that she prepares on special days; Enid Blyton’s Five Go Feasting, Famously Good Recipes, 2018, is an effort by food and travel writer Josh Sutton to select 80 recipes inspired by the meals enjoyed by the Famous Five in their numerous books; and Revolting Recipes by Roald Dahl put together by Felicity Dahl and Josie Fison with illustrations by the inimitable Quentin Blake, 1994.

Then there are books that use recipes (and right ones at that) to put across a revolutionary socio-political idea, or simply an out-of-the-box one. Such as the hilarious One Ingredient Recipes by Happy Potato Press, 2020, which you may not even eat! The Woman Suffrage Cookbook, edited by Hattie A. Burr and Nettie Shuler, 1886, for instance, features recipes from prominent suffragists. One of these was Rebel Soup, another was Mother’s Election Cake, thus contextualizing the changing roles of women, outside of the home while still fulfilling their domestic duties. The Special Effects Cookbook by advertising copywriter Michael E. Samonek, 1992, has ‘dozens of recipes involving ordinary ingredients but producing extraordinary dishes’.

In addition to the books (there are many more), are artworks that are more like archival documentation rather than paintings and sculptures.  They have to be seen (and experienced!) to be believed. Let me describe one of them – Imagined Menu by Leone Contini, 2013-ongoing. This work is based on the prison diaries of a Sicilian soldier Giosue Fiorentino, grand-uncle of Contini, who was captured in October 1917 during World War I and sent to prison camps in Germany and Austro-Hungary. In the camp, the prisoners who survived on a bowl of soup, would imagine the various kinds of tasty foods that were cooked in their homes, the memory of which kept their spirits high.  As they discussed how these foods were prepared Fiorentino made detailed notes of these memories, and the intensity of their desire for these foods was captured in two hand-bound notebooks, ‘the result becoming a vast mosaic of Italian regional cuisines from Friuli to Sicily’.  

An artwork by Arti Kadam.

The second exhibition, House of Objects by sculptor Arti Kadam, at the White Gallery on Bhaili-Vasna Road, works at another level altogether. Fabulously presented, Arti sculpts (in wood and fibre-glass) the quotidian objects that populate our kitchens and are like the extension of our arms – spoons, mallets, whisks, peelers, knives, tongs, spatulas, churners, sieves, turners, brushes, rolling pins, grinders, graters, slotted spoons, in short, the works! But what a beautiful turn she puts on each of those finely sculpted objects … sometimes their ends blossom into flowers, exotic-looking leaves, seeds, buds, small animals like squirrels that run up and down trees.  And sometimes, surrealistically, both ends blossom at the same time, scalloped into deep cups, pointy leaves, half-open buds, sickles, abstract forms.

Another artwork by Arti.

Being in the kitchen is not every woman’s dream (often a nightmare!). I wonder how Arti looks at it or feels about it. However, it goes without saying that the kind of imagination and the actual hard physical work of sculpting, buffing, polishing she has brought to transform these very ordinary, functional kitchen tools into things of extraordinary beauty, establishes her as an artist of immense talent and ingenuity.  

So delightful!