The Onion Project

The Onion Project

For me, a kitchen represents the tension between the technological and a-technological in interesting ways. It is a space where notions of desire and technology come together- inhabitated as it is by a projection towards a certain way of life where technology can boost efficiency and so there is that extra bit of leisure. It is usually located in the interior of the house, and so, can be understood as an ‘interiorized’ space.

Unlike a western kitchen, that will be equipped with a mixer-dishwasher-electric chimney-oven unit, an Indian Kitchen will be empty to begin with. Then there will be a microwave brought in. It will be kept on that particular shelf from where it is most visible to people moving in and out of the living room. A mixer unit, a blender, vacuum cleaner a grill oven, an electric chimney, modular designs shall happily follow.

But there will be things that will be insistently done manually, by hands. Chopping onions would be one them. Onions are used world over as a primary flavoring ingredient. Indian food is particularly heavy on its use and at times cooking a meal would involve chopping atleast more than two pounds. But this would be insistently done by hands. By the end of it, you would have wept a bucket. But then, you will forget and redo the ritual once again. You will talk about how pleasurable and tactile, how some things are just better done that way.

I conceive this project as a kitchen slab set up in front of a camera. Much like the kind of interface that exists in the way a small built in camera is placed in a laptop screen. Unobtrusive and yet there. Women will have the choice to walk in and begin by thinking aloud to one question: how many pounds of onion do they think or remember they would have chopped. This, they will do while chopping onions placed on the side with an assortment of knives. This everyday, banal activity will slip into a way of recounting and remembering, the kind that happens when one is aware of being trapped and free at the same time. There will be oral histories, vignettes from time past, projections into the future, whims, fancies, desires, sighs and whispers.

Situating the project within the kitchen helps me critically engage with the notions around the idea of women and work in capitalist, global economies; where work within home means no work. This creates a series of ironies with the way work is understood, tied to notions of material exchange and economics in global economies. I think combining it with video projections of many women doing many different things in the kitchen, counter building it with the place of women in monumental spaces and corporate workcultures, is relational as an idea and can be explored further. It also helps me thinking around the idea of a south Asian Kitchen as an installation.