Re-Orienting Taste Eating and Healing in Indian and Chinese Food Cultures

Food and drink arise from the depth of our everyday cultures, constructing our social relations as well as our connections to life and livelihoods. Food is intimately related to our well-being as humans even as it becomes the canvas on which we express our aesthetic sensibilities. The ideation and cooking of food draws as much on research as it does on artistic traditions of representation.

Re-Orienting Taste is for us a work of art that extends beyond visuality into performance. Instead of asking you to look at a finished product, however, we invite you to engage with the actual process of food design through touch and taste and smell.

The idea of the ‘edible archives’ is a pivotal one for our project. These are the archives we carry within us, comprising all the things we have ever eaten, whether comfort food or aspirational food; all the tastes we have loved, or by which we have been intrigued. In creating the culinary conversation between ‘Indian’ and ‘Chinese’ food cultures, Chef Anumitra draws on her personal edible archives, assembled through her formal training in the cuisines of East, South-East and South Asia.

We believe, however, that the edible archives, while they may take shape as individual preferences of what to eat, are deeply embedded in the cultural histories of the region. These histories foreground intersection and connection of people, food, religions, architecture, music, and sculpture over the last two thousand years and more. Today we invite you to taste what is recommended for the season in which we are transitioning to Spring, via ingredients that are to be found in both contexts.

A Tasting Event and Discussion

Chef Anumitra and Shalini Krishan, Edible Archives
Dr Nithya Sivan

Date: Friday, March 1, 2024
Time: 6:30 PM - 8:30 PM HKT
Venue: Asia Art Archive, Hong Kong