Kitchen to Kacheri

Curatorial Note

It is only human to hold on to our memories, personal or collective, and hope to preserve our life’s inheritance with care and conviction in various forms. In the process, we often tend to wonder - why; what for; who cares? We ask questions like - Who cares what my great grand aunt wrote in her experiences of the independence movement; or 1994 ના પ્લેગ દરમિયાન મુખ્ય ભૂમિકા ભજવનાર મારા શહેરના ડોકટરોની વાર્તાઓ શું છે; or मेरे पुश्तैनी गांव की ऐतिहासिक सरोवर की कहानियां जानने में किसे दिलचस्पी होगी?

Through a call for participation, we thus proposed that the participants begin thinking about their family or local histories beyond the ‘personal’.

Would we make our personal history public?

If not, what makes us hesitate?

If yes, what socio-political concerns does it address?

Does it help us critically look at issues of erasure, marginalization, oppression…?

Or, would we rather continue living with them ‘at home’?

ઘર or Home, traditionally defined as a dwelling or habitation, also means Enclosure (Proto-Indo-European *gʰr̥dʰ-ó-s, from *gʰerdʰ). It imbues a sense of safe keeping. On the other hand, گڑ گڑ کرنا (Ghar Ghar Karna) in Urdu means Rumble [ruhm-buh l].

घर करना, a Hindi phrase, also means - मन आदि में अच्छी तरह से स्थिर होना ताकि सहजता से न निकल सके - to imbibe and internalize it in yourself, such that it cannot be erased easily. Looking at such iterations, must we still think of ‘the body’ as the only home to these histories? Or do we need our institutions to care for our personal stories? Afterall, the name अभिलेखागार (Abhilekhagar is the Hindi term for an archiving institution) or যাদুঘর (Yādughara is the Bangla term for museum), both seem to highlight the phonetic of घर. Apart from protecting historical assets, how do the instruments of care adapt themselves in the public realm? Is it even possible to imagine or elucidate the same kind of care in cultural institutions as we have in our homes?

Kitchen to Kacheri has emerged as a collective response to questions about the changing relationships between the State, cultural institutions, people and their historical narratives. By archiving and urging readers to engage with a range of different archival boxes, we wish to unpack the logic of care, custodianship and construction, and the ways to care for somebody else’s narrative. In this pursuit, the emotion of care extends from domestic to public, and each archive reinterprets the concepts of preservation and personal emotions against political responsibility. Created over a series of constantly evolving dialogues, we invite you all to be a part of it for further deliberation.

At Kitchen to Kacheri, we want to know

Where do you come from,

Why do you care and how?