Make a 'No-Recipe Roti': Interactive Art Workshop

Join artist Sauren Aru-Blaney for an in-person workshop 'Bodies of Knowledge' where you will make rotis without a recipe whilst exploring the relationship between food and culture, home, authenticity, and food as a form of resistance.

This workshop is part of Eastside Projects' 'Still There Are Seeds to Be Gathered' Programme, a series of creative events led by artists to share and create communities.

Roti is an unleavened flatbread with origins in the Indian subcontinent. Deriving from the Sanskrit word for ‘bread’, roṭikā, roti was first mentioned in text over 6000 years ago. Today, versions of roti can be found from Malaysia to the Caribbean. The roti’s diasporic evolution traces migration and adaptation and highlights the importance of food in locating a sense of home.

Using basic ingredients – flour, water, and oil – we will explore the relationship between cooking and the generation of knowledge. Ideas and experiences will be generated, activated, and shared as we make, cook, and eat together, framed by a series of questions including … How can making and eating create a sense of home? Why is sharing joyful? How do we understand authenticity? How is food a form of resistance?

Intuitive responses are welcomed and no prior roti cooking knowledge is required!

Please reach out to your host if you have any dietary requirements or accessibility needs, and we will do our best to accommodate.

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About the artist:

Sauren (she/they) is a curator interested in knowledge, archives, and diaspora. Her artistic practice often favours live programmes which generate unexpected forms of knowledge.

'Bodies of Knowledge' is part of Sauren’s current research project, 'Becoming Together', which investigates food’s potential in curatorial practice to build "diasporic institutionalities". Feel free to pick her brain about it!

Sauren also works as a Library Assistant at Wellcome Collection and Associate Lecturer at University of the Arts London.