Artist Broadcast | Kaajal Modi: Kitchen Cultures

Kaajal Modi is an artist and multidisciplinary designer with a background in community food activism, participatory design for social contexts and graphics & illustration.

 

During an Arts Catalyst Radio residency, Kaajal has been working with research outcomes and materials from a previous food-art-science research residency, in order to develop a multi-layered sound installation/experience that is intended to be listened to in your own kitchen while you cook. The work is an attempt to capture the experience of collaborative cooking, and being surrounded by women+ in the kitchen sharing stories, experiences, poems, recipes and joy. The voices you will hear are collaborators Eklass, Pepa, Rinkal, Sibutseng, Soha, Victoria, and chef collaborator Fatima. The piece incorporates poetry and storytelling with the sounds of cooking and fermenting, creating an inter-cultural dialogue between the people and other beings who are collaborating in our preserved foods, to notice and connect us more fully to our food web.

“I’ve grown up surrounded by women and femme people in my community whose knowledge and agency was so overlooked, but they knew so much, and did so much. They knew about care, about food, about magic and about science and about the world in microcosm. What’s cooking if not kitchen science? It’s also kitchen magic, or it seemed that way to me as a child, and as I grow older that’s just becoming more self-evident.”

Copyright Kaajal Modi & Arts Catalyst.
Produced by Kitty Turner.
Sound design by Lori E Allen.
Graphic Design by An Endless Supply.

Radio Arts Catalyst is supported by Arts Council England with Art Fund and Sheffield Church Burgesses Trust.