Kochi-Muziris Biennale - A Place at the Table
This Sunday “A Place at the Table” will open as a satellite of the Kochi-Muziris Biennale in India. My mind is flooded with the memories I hold of India, and there is so much I want to say about it but I need to sit down and phrase that well. So for today, just a big thank you to curator Tanya Abraham for including my sound installation “Kalpit’s Kitchen”, and also to the friends that I have made and kept over there. I wish I could be there with you.
“A Place at the Table” reminisces the position of women as the subaltern; it concerns the complex narrative concerning the precarious position involved replete with the politics associated with customs and traditions. Socio-cultural frameworks, which position women to accept roles assigned to them irrefutably, and their links to ancient ideologies and dogmas, which tightly weave these into the intricate fabric of society, focus in this exhibition.
Kalpit’s Kitchen is a sound installation piece made of recordings that I took in 2017 in my assistant Kalpit’s Kitchen and at the river near his house in rural Goa. Kalpit had been helping me out with things during my time at The Story of Space Festival in Panjim, and his family had invited us for an epic feast in the countryside. It was wonderful and this piece came out of it. Incidentally, while this program is about women’s place in society, in Kalpit’s Kitchen men and women were preparing the food for us together, joyfully chatting along.