Kallat’s installation of 22,000 rotis in honor of his late father.
BLOG: Valley View
By Zenobia Khaleel
SAN FRANCISCO: Before the Bay Area became synonymous with Silicon, the agricultural bounty of the region (once known as the “Valley of Heart’s Delightâ€) lured waves of immigrants to the region and shaped its cultural diversity.
California’s 43 billion dollar food industry produces over half of the fruits, vegetables, wine and nuts grown in the United States. Here, food is big business, a creative craft, and a cause on several fronts. In an effort to explore how food defines communities and personal pleasures, last month, The San Jose Museum of Art (SJMA) launched ‘Around The Table: connecting food, creativity and community’, a series of programs and exhibits that unfolds in stages and carries on till Spring of 2014.
The first course dished out at the exhibition is a substantial, contemplative art installation: ‘Epilogue’ by the internationally acclaimed artist Jitish Kallat, in which he honors his late father. Epilogue is a deeply personal, reverential sequence of photographs of the roti, a staple of daily life in India. Each roti represents the phase of the moon in every day of his father’s lifespan. These 22,000 moons bear witness to his time on earth. The poignant memorial is a metaphor for sustenance, and a meditation on time.
Kallat is attentive to the universal themes of art, birth, death, survival; what he calls the “endless narratives of human struggle.†Through his work, he reminds viewers of life’s natural ebb and flow and of the things that nourish us—bread, family, celestial rhythms. He places the space and scale of one human life within a cosmic context.
Kallat, who works in varied media, including painting, sculpture, photography and video art, will give a talk about his work at the India Community Center in Milpitas on October 3rd at 8 p.m.
The second -and the largest-stage of the festival will be on view from November 9th, exploring a broad range of food related issues like mutagenic food, food justice, the rich cultural and bio-diversity of the valley, fast-food culture, etc. The exhibits engage the viewer in ways that are delightful, inspiringly inventive and activist.
The art of 29 contemporary artists on display will include Sita Kuratomi Bhawmik’s Curry flavored Wallpaper: a commentary on food and racial stereotypes; Sam Van Aken’s living sculpture: tree grafted with 40 different varieties of stone fruits highlighting perseverance and diversity; Angela Filo’s photographic series ‘Silicon Valley Orchard’ chronicles the changing landscape of Silicon Valley’ and Cauldron, by Rene Yung, commemorates San Jose’s early Chinese immigrants. The installation incorporates a historical rice bowl excavated from the city’s former Chinatown site.
SJMA’s multidisciplinary food exhibition outspreads the museum walls to a community wide festival of food, art and ideas. In alliance with 33 community partners, the exhibition presents projects by local farmers, artists, performers and activists; creating a fertile breeding ground to sense and reflect on the nutritional, emotional and even spiritual aspects of food.
Apart from farm tours, field trips, documentaries and debates, the community events feature the following events:
Veggielution Community farm will conduct a monthly series of ‘Art in the Garden’. They also join forces with SJMA on the arts and science education initiative in classrooms, ‘sowing creativity’.
War Gastronomy,a group of artists that create connections through sharing stories and recipes in order to re-frame personal histories of dislocation due to war and conflict will present their exhibit ’recipes of relocation’.
The Tech Museum of Innovation, San Jose, will present Snack Tech, an innovative use of technology to create unique flavors and textures in contemporary cuisine.
San Jose Institute of Contemporary art will present projects based on ‘Eating disorders in a disordered culture’.
Seed sharing library; SJMA, has installed a DIY seed sharing kiosk where people have access to free non-genetically modified seeds.
The interim Curator of SJMA, Susan Leask, elaborates on the objective and the rationale behind ‘Around the Table; connecting food, creativity, community’.
“This exhibition offers multiple ways of making connections between food, creativity and community. The installations, objects, videos, and audios all work in concert to present a multi-sensory experience for the visitors,†she said.
“The goals we developed for Around the Table include highlighting the message that food is a product of nature and culture: it reflects family traditions and marks our memories. Beyond offering daily sustenance, food is nurture of many sorts. In a profound way, food can heal individuals and communities by helping us reconnect to our senses, memories and our cultures,â€Leask said.
“One of the magical things about art is its ability to distill complex problems, concepts or social/political situations down to a visual essence and then share their unique perspective with others. We do not mean to change anyone’s relationship to food; we are trying to offer, through art and programs, alternative views to help raise awareness of world-wide implications of food and the ways in which we produce, create, and share food experiences,†she said.
(Zenobia Khaleel has donned a lot of hats; writer, photographer, travel enthusiast, troop leader, amateur actor, event coordinator, community volunteer, but predominantly go by the title Mom.)
To contact the author, email to zenobiakhaleel@americanbazaaronline.com