Smell Trace

Free
Culinary Arts
Exhibition

Curated by
Edible Issues

The Old GMC Complex

14th December - 21st December
11:00 AM - 07:00 PM

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Smell Trace is inspired by the convergence of food cultures during train journeys across three select routes within the Indian Railways Network. Train journeys are a gentle reminder of the complex odour-graph of India. This installation is based on Ishita Dey’s ethnographic project on migrant infrastructures – trains as sites of “viapolitics.”

Long-distance train journeys are synonymous with signature items available on train routes and at train stations. Through a selection of 22 smells across three long-distance train journeys, this exhibit fuses the interior and exterior worlds of train compartments and train stations to create an experiential journey of food in train journeys.

Trains, as a symbol of modernity, were sites of mixing and familiarizing with one another’s food habits through smells and tastes of foods. “Smell Trace” aims to further the conversation on tolerance towards “smelly” food. Smelling is an intimate act. What is to smell without seeing? What shapes our prejudices around smells? How much of cultural practices and notions of smell-touch-pollution guide our acts of smelling? What kind of trace do we leave behind through our social perception of smells?

Dr. Ishita Dey - Artist

Arko Saha, Principal Architect, Otherworlds - Design and Production

Arko Saha - Image Credits

The project is a part of Smell, Memory and Food Systems. In the context of food systems and climate change, smell becomes an act of resistance, remembrance, and imagination. This curation looks to invite audiences to experience olfaction beyond nostalgia, to explore the worlds that have been erased, ecosystems in flux, and the futures we dream of tasting.