Taste of Place Episode 9
The Power of Storytelling
In this episode of Taste of Place, Anna chats with:
Shiraz Bayjoo, a visual artist.
Zolitha Magengelele, who runs a pop-up project called The Cooks’ Table that works with artists and translates what they do through food.
Dr. Mythri Jegathesan, a cultural anthropologist and associate professor in the Department of Anthropology at Santa Clara University.
Here are some highlights:
Pepper in the Global South
Shiraz from Mauritius, and Zolitha from South Africa, discuss how pepper is not as common as it is in the Global North.
Re-creating Home
Anna and Shiraz recount their time sharing a studio space, and Shiraz takes us through his process for creating art pieces that recreate the feeling of home.
Zolitha discusses replicating that same feeling of home when she cooks and is storytelling.
Retelling Histories
Shiraz emphasizes the importance of listening to people, allowing them to tell their own stories, and breaking away from stereotypes when telling stories from the past.
Economic Crisis in Sri Lanka
Mythri discusses the economic crisis in Sri Lanka and how it was a long time coming as a result of the government disregarding the rights of, and economically marginalizing, minorities such as rural farmers.
Mythri proposes that the key to solving the economic crisis in Sri Lanka starts with speaking with plantation workers about what they want in their lives.
Nostalgia as a Choice
Mythri describes nostalgia as a decision to engage the past in a particular way. She ties this into her own childhood and being outside of Sri Lanka while her family was displaced, and having trouble with the ethics of feeling nostalgic for a place and time that brought violence and pain to others.
Anna points out that while it is a great point not to romanticize the colonial past and perpetuate inequality, there are still moments of joy that one can reminisce about.
GUESTS
After several years as a fashion buyer, Zolitha Magengelele took the leap and left a career in fashion retail to pursue a passion for the cultural space, by fusing love of imaginative cooking with her enthusiasm for contemporary art and the creative communities behind it. She founded ‘The Cook’s Table’(TCT) project in 2013. TCT has brought art enthusiasts, brands that are committed to the arts, and the artists, a bit closer to each other through a series of carefully curated ‘occasional’ dinners and collaborative events. Diners have enjoyed intimate dinners at the homes and studios of South Africa’s most celebrated and awarded contemporary artists, such as Nicholas Hlobo, Nandipha Mntambo, Athi-Patra Ruga, Lady Skollie and Mary Sibande. The Cook’s Table has also collaborated on events with brands such as Spier wines, musician Nakhane, as well as curators and art advisors such as Gabi Ngcobo and Kholisa Thomas.
Zolitha Magengelele
Mythri Jegathesan is a cultural anthropologist and associate professor in the Department of Anthropology at Santa Clara University. Her research interests include plantations, tea, work, gender, human rights, and minority politics. She is co-editor of Anthropology of Work Review and earned her PhD in Anthropology from Columbia University. Her book, Tea and Solidarity: Tamil Women and Work in Postwar Sri Lanka (2019) is an ethnography of plantation life and work in the context of ethnonationalist violence and civil war in Sri Lanka. Her work has appeared in Himal Southasian, Cultural Anthropology, Feminist Anthropology, Anthropological Quarterly, SAMAJ, Dialectical Anthropology, Commoning Ethnography, e-flux journal, Colomboscope Interdisciplinary Art Festival, and Scroll Projects on Paper.
Mythri Jegathesan
Shiraz Bayjoo is a visual artist who works across lots of mediums with different kinds of communities, predominantly focused on the western Indian Ocean and East Africa.