The Visual Encyclopaedia of Indian Foods (VEIF) Experience is an avant-garde project that blends visual art, culinary heritage, and interactive technology. In an ingredient-led narrative presenting the many visible and invisible layers in everyday articles of food. There is tacit cultural knowledge within ingredients, its processing and cooking to make food and medicine; and consecrated with communal almanacs, it holds deep conservation knowledge vital for regenerative food systems of our future.
By immersing viewers in a multi-sensory environment, the VEIF Experience challenges conventional perceptions of the quotidian act of cooking and food in its complex systems. Through its image-making, it invites audiences to explore the profound connections between culture, identity, and gastronomy.
Through her work, Mani seeks to answer how art can contribute to the gastronomical narrative from the subcontinent, while conveying a sensibility of Indian hospitality, situations of eating, and the idea of labour in the Indian kitchen.
