Archival Dining™ is The House of Zaikanama’s practice of creating an edible exhibition.

 

The work begins with fragments from the archive: cookbooks, household manuals, memoirs, and scattered references to meals. These fragments are read carefully and placed in relation to one another. From them a historical moment begins to take shape.

 

The aim is to use historical methodology to reconstruct a period in history, often narrowed down to a specific geographical location and theme.

 

The most recent series explored food and domesticity in nineteenth century Delhi. The data point, argument, and artefact of the exhibition are arranged according to a methodology that identifies ruptures and possible interpretations. There are always limits to how much we know.

 

In a conventional exhibition the artefacts remain on display. Here they do not. They are encountered through eating.

 

The exhibition ends when the artefacts are ingested.