: “Lot can happen over food,” is the tag-line of the latest edition of the sambrama put together by Venkatappa Art Gallery Forum (VAG). Keeping in mind the festive season, VAG decided to come up with events that place food in focus. The space will host exhibitions, performances, live demonstrations and talks, at the confluence of food and art.
Photographs, sculptures, installations, and paintings in the gallery highlight food traditions, practices and recipes from all over Karnataka. A painting may just remind you to make kokum juice. Elsewhere, you can find the history and origin of maddur vade depicted visually.
Close-ups of dry red chillies, onions, garlic being ground on a grindstone for a chutney are a visual delight. Apart from the visual route, artists also probe the historical, socio-economical and political aspects of food. Parameshwar Jolad has suspended a vegetables over a magnifying glass. When seen through the magnifying glass, the vegetables appear distorted. “This is what we are doing to nature — making it ugly,” says Jolad.
Arpita RG has filled up a portion of the wall with drawings by children studying in the government school in Shira taluk. Through the fourth to seventh standard children she documented the food practices and recipes used by the nearly 20 communities in the village. “The diversity of food is amazing and it was possible to document it through the children. The communities have retained 75 per cent of their traditional food and children are also aware of them. They know what winter food is, what food is to be eaten if you have a headache or indigestion,” says Arpita, who has culled out this work from a bigger project on community recipes and documentation for the India Foundation for the Arts.
Children depict various scenes — a monitor lizard and animals being hunted for food, dishes like holige being prepared with maradi. “I have guided them on the content but with regard to how to draw or paint, I have not told them anything. Government schools in villages don’t have art teachers. If you look at the quality of their art, however, it is hard to believe that. Their work has so much finesse.”
While the exhibits remain the same, the events change every day. The day we visited, Vanastri, an NGO, a women-run seed saving collective in Sirsi, did a tuber food workshop and tasting session with Lalitha Manjunath. Concentrating on Malnad food, hot vadappes prepared from boiled tapioca, rice flour, onions, dill and coriander along with holige and accompanying chutneys were served to the visitors.
Organic seeds and books such as Grow your Garden were sold. The seed rangoli by the women farmers of the Malnad region remains on display, though.
Sambrama is on at Venkatappa Art Gallery till December 29 where you can catch performances by Smitha Cariappa, Avril Unger, and a discussion on the politics of food by Veeranganakumari Solanki.
