Issues about food, sustainability, agriculture and also food cycles involving growing, farming, harvesting, producing, circulating and distributing, are the focus of artworks by Indian and international artists here.
Ravi Agarwal, Leone Contini (Italy), Rabya Naseer and Hurmat-ul-Ain (Pakistan), Mona Gandhi, Simran Chopra, Srishti Lakhera and Suvani Suri are the artists who participated in a month long residency held by Khoj, whose outcome is now being exhibited at 'InContext: public.Art.Ecology - Food Edition III'.
The three day exhibition begins here from April 17.
"Khoj's InContext programme was instituted to create a public dialogue around ecological issues through artistic projects and interventions," says Pooja Sood, director, Khoj.
Through residencies over the last two years, Sood says, they have narrowed focus to supporting projects and interventions that have dealt with a variety of ecological issues surrounding food.
The residency is also developing conversations around other food-related issues, such as politics of food and food as an artistic medium through artist-hosted food workshops, dinner performances and performance interventions.
Ravi Agarwal, an artist, environmental activist, writer and curator who works with photography, video and installation to create documentaries and artwork on subjects like nature, work, labour and the street.
In his work titled "Desire - Denial- Deprivation", Agarwal says he explores the idea of a voluntary denial of food like fasting as well as the involuntary deprivation like starvation caused by its absence or a lack of access to it.
"Apart from this, I am also exploring ideas of how food has conceptually been thought in anthropology and philosophy. Through photos and videos I am documenting multiple food-scapes for this residency, which govern food including farms, markets, shops and food courts," says Agarwal.
Italian artist Leone Contini who has studied philosophy and cultural anthropology borrows tools of contemporary anthropology for his work.
"During my stay I came across an unfinished concrete ramp at the Satpula Dam, containing ruins from the pre-Mughal era. The stream now called a drain or 'nallah' is part of a complex system of rivers and artificial canals, often buried under the surface of the city, and used as a garbage dump. I have used the site as a subject of a lecture-performance which includes storytelling, drawing, cooking," says Contini.
