Food can play multiple roles in society, and it means different things to different people. Kulam – The Festival of Food in Cultural Discourse aims to explore these aspects of food during a two-day festival on March 28 and 29, at the Cochin Club in Fort Kochi.
Curated by Tanya Abraham, the festival comes from the idea that food is not just about taste, but has many layers to it. The inspiration to dedicate a whole festival to food came after she curated a collateral work during the previous edition of Kochi Biennale.
“My curatorial work invited projects that involved food. I always find it an interesting medium because it connects with everyone easily. Food has a certain positioning, which is much more than just about eating or flavour,” she says. “We are intricately linked to the idea of food.”
The word Kulam, meaning a gathering, holds the spirit of the event. Tanya calls it a “contact zone” — a space where people, practices and ideas will intersect. Over two days, artists, chefs, writers, researchers and performers will come together to celebrate food.
It is not quite a food festival, she says, nor a literary gathering or an art exhibition, but something that deliberately blurs all three.
“We are deconstructing,” she says. “Suppose we take a novel, it will not just be ‘discussed’, we will break it down, discuss it with a chef and create food that is inspired by it, changing the dynamics,” she explains.
This approach can be found in the festival’s artistic events as well. Works by artists like Riyas Komu are inspired by Mahatma Gandhi and historical events such as the Salt Satyagraha, using salt as both material and metaphor.
Seema Kohli will engage with the memory of the Partition through food practices that persist in their homes, while Kochi-based Sushma Anand will explore themes of division and belonging through her works with ceramics.
Kulam will explore how food is an important part of heritage and identity. “We have a recorded video of a snack being prepared in a Konkani household. It shows how even a simple process is a powerful act and becomes an important part of heritage,” Tanya says.
There are also performances scheduled. A performance by Kerala Kalamandalam reimagines classical storytelling as a ‘food journey,’ while other sessions look at colonial baking histories in Kochi and indigenous food rituals that evoke ancestral memory.
“We have an artist from Karnataka, who will talk about a particular community that cooks food only during death,” she says.
Across the festival, food becomes political, spiritual, and performative. “If I just make a pot of biryani and keep it on the table, that’s a very one-dimensional way of looking at food,” Tanya says.
Kulam, instead, asks what lies beneath: the labour, the caste and class dynamics, the rituals, the memories.
For tickets, visit: www.linktr.ee/kulamfestival
Kochi Through Food
Kulam extends beyond its physical venue through an ongoing public project that invites people to write letters to Kochi. The ‘Kochi Culinary Narratives’ initiative invites participants to reflect on food memories, recipes, or tastes that have any personal meaning and write them down as a letter to the city. These submissions will be a part of an archive. Organisers envision this as a long-term project, with plans to publish and preserve these contributions. “We want to create an archive for Kochi,” says Tanya, as she emphasises the need for collective participation in documenting everyday histories.
Festival Highlights
Where: Cochin Club, Fort Kochi
When: March 28 & 29
March 28
4 pm to 5 pm: Food’s Role in Socio-Cultural Politics (Malayalam)
6.30 pm to 7.30 pm: Exploring Identity Through Culinary Culture
8.30pm to 10pm: Food and Death Rituals: An Inextricable Link
9pm to 10.30pm: Derek & the Cats, Indie Jazz
March 29
4 pm to 5pm: Food as Memory Keepers
4pm to 6pm: How the Portuguese Changed Indian Cuisine
6.30pm to 7pm: Land as Studio - On Nature, Nurture and Nourishment
9pm to 9.45pm: Kathakali