Sarasija Subramanian

Sarasija Subramanian is an artist based in Bangalore. Her practice engages analogies derived from the organic world in relation to its cultural and political implications. She graduated from the Faculty of Fine Art, Maharaja Sayajirao University Baroda in 2017. She has participated in residencies at 1Shanthiroad Studio/Gallery, Bangalore, 2018, and the Inlaks-UNIDEE Residency at Cittadellarte, Italy, 2016. Since 2019, she has been the editor and director of programmes of Reliable Copy. Her collaborator on this project, Nihaal Faizal is also Bangalore-based artist. His work has explored the fictional history of Flubber as an ideological substance; family memories around the legendary Indian singer Mohammed Rafi; the international phenomenon of Taste of India restaurants; and drawings made by AI in science fiction films. In 2018, he founded Reliable Copy, a publishing house for works, projects and writings by artists.

This grant will enable Sarasija and her collaborator Nihaal to study the idea of the community kitchen and the history of culinary engagements of 1Shanthiroad, a studio and artists’ space in Bangalore. They will collect recipes from artists, residents, staff, patrons and the extended family of the space, alongside in-depth conversations with key figures from its history to build a portrait of an evolving cultural community. By mapping recipes across generations, cultures and timelines, Sarasija and Nihaal will frame the kitchen and food as integral to the functioning of this space as a collective.

Looking at the evolution of the cookbook format, Sarasija and Nihaal will explore the ways in which its characteristics are extended to include histories and contexts and not just recipes. They will examine how food is framed as a marker of cultural exchange and how the kitchen at 1Shanthiroad nurtures these culinary exchanges. Critically looking at the history of food, its cultural specificities in terms of caste, class, gender and geography, Sarasija and Nihaal will analyse how Bangalore and 1Shanthiroad become spaces where such demarcations are blurred. They will inquire into the philosophies of cooking as a micro-event that mobilises both space and community, making 1Shanthiroad a living heritage of Bangalore. They will also document local and regional cooking traditions and traditions and histories of various parts of India and the world that have become part of 1Shanthiroad’s narrative.

Sarasija and Nihaal will document the recipes that exist orally or in the practice of cooking. They will record oral narratives, anecdotes and histories around the recipes and their relevance to the individual, the space and the event at which they were prepared. Due to the varied nature of contributors who have shared in this diverse pool of recipes of 1Shanthiroad, the interviews will be in various languages, including English, Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Tamil, German, and Spanish, among others. They will be then translated to English. 

During the course of their research, Sarasija and Nihaal will organise events that will involve cooking as a practice in the arts spaces, screenings of videos and films that respond to the idea of the cookbook, and an exhibition of artistic and familial cookbooks. A specific cooking workshop around a particular dish will be organised in which history, politics and the socio-cultural context of that particular dish will be discussed. The outcome of this project will be a cookbook and an open archive of materials, resources, references and audiovisual documentation compiled during the process of the research. The Grantee’s deliverables to IFA with the final reports will be the cookbook and audiovisual documentation of workshops, exhibitions and interviews with the resource people. 

This grant is made possible with support from Titan Company Limited.