kitchen W H I S P E R S By
Shravika Bothra
“Food should be valued less for
caloric content and more for what it expresses about relationships� - Gary Paul Nabhan
Artist Statement We are what we eat and we use food to celebrate at weddings, birthdays, and family gatherings. It brings people together, for enjoyment. Earlier in the year I was just looking at how one recipe traveled across countries and how I could spread it more. I saw that was not giving me the results I wanted plus I wanted to make a book with stories and recipes. I started cooking when I was about 11. There has always been a part of me which has wanted to go to culinary school instead. But because I am vegetarian there are not too many options out there. So to keep practicing I keep cooking a lot. People have told me I am a good cook and I know I am. I may not know to arrange it or place it but what I cannot do in presentation I make up for in cooking. This book will not be published in bulk, but will rather be an object, which sits in your library or on your coffee table. The book will
be printed in a small batch and maybe just given to the people who are in the book in itself. However, as a project I still want Kitchen Whispers to go around with a word of mouth. To do this the second part of the project which are like postcards. It will be mailed out to people so they can start collecting these recipes or making the dish using the recipe sent and then posting it on the blog for others to see. With this work I represent moments between me and people closest to me. I reveal stories about our relationship and then link it to a recipe or a dish we connect to. I then make the food and document it. But then it goes on to others revealing stories if they wish to, if nothing just hanging on to the recipe to make it one day for someone, which will start a new story.
Persuasive Text Kitchen Whispers is about food and relationships I make with people over it. It starts to reveal stories about why I associate food with these people closest to me. It starts to be just about people closest to me but then through the postcards it opens up a platform for other to join this. The book just tells these stories and puts down the recipe like in a cookbook. It will be kept on your bookshelf or a coffee table, but hardly would you see it on a kitchen counter as this is not going to be printed in bulk but rather in limited quantity. The name is appropriate, as I am not making a big deal about it but rather letting it go spread by word of mouth.
Prototype
Work in progress These postcards will be laser cut and then the recipe will be stuck to the back of it and then mailed to others. After other people recieve it they might throw it, reblog it, make the food or decide to share their own story on a platform created by Kitchen Whispers.
THANK YOU