Cantina
by Nikhil Vettukattil
Over the course of the commissioning period, Nikhil Vettukatil has been working with a number of interrelated processes. The first was to gather information from cookbooks, scientific papers and government guidelines to find out what a healthy, simple, affordable and climate-friendly diet in the Nordics might look like. The artist’s interest has been to make publicly available a set of recipes that interpret this otherwise overwhelmingly complex information, which depends on a variety of factors such as transport distances, nutritional data, prices, seasons, and so on.
The artist has then worked with this information as source material to produce a series of text-based instructions, recipes that can function as algorithms to be followed routinely, with a recursive pattern and cumulative effect. This collection of recipes has the potential to transcend the emphasis on immediacy for a deeper temporal relationship with the participant. The recipes are holistic, experimental writings arranged into sections on the themes of disaster, survival and resistance. The collection of recipes will be distributed online and physically as embroidered garments and second-hand clothing – like a wearable cookbook.
Using the cookbook as a starting point, the artist has also organised an occasional canteen, inspired by community kitchens, called Cantina, where the recipes can be shared and discussed. The final and most speculative part of the project is an infrastructure model for increasing access to affordable food, using the cookbook to ask ‘how do social relations need to be organised to make this scalable.
Introduction from the Artist
this synthetic image suggests some of the dominant aesthetics and visual language in
contemporary culture today and their limitations.
About the Artist
Nikhil Vettukattil (b. 1990, Bengaluru, India) Artist and writer who lives and works in Oslo. Using a range of media such as sound, installation, performance, text, sculpture, and video, his practice questions modes of representation and image-making processes in their relation to lived experiences. While in residence at Artica Svalbard this Autumn and over the course of the coming year, Nikhil will develop a new piece of work that will incorporate research on food production and distribution in Svalbard and its relation to the climate crisis.
He has previously exhibited at venues such as Kunsthall Oslo (2022), Nasjonalmuseet, Oslo (2022), K-U-K, Trondheim (2021), CAPC, Bordeaux (2021), Art Hub Copenhagen (2021), K4 Galleri, Oslo (2021), Louise Dany, Oslo (2020), EKA Gallery, Tallinn (2020), Kristiansand Kunsthall (2020), and Le Bourgeois, London (2019). Forthcoming exhibitions include Counterimaginaries at Tromsø Kunstforening (February 2023), and a duo show with Halvor Rønning at FELIX GAUDLITZ, Vienna (May 2023). He is a member of the art collectives Tenthaus and Carrie, as well as a part of Atelier Kunstnerforbundet and the Institute for Scene Experiments. As part of Tenthaus, he will co-curate the MOMENTUM 12 Biennale opening May 2023.
