Gulai

2018

Gulai is a type of food containing rich, spicy and succulent curry-like sauce commonly found in Indonesia. The artist curiosity towards gulai initiated by one memorable short story titled Gulai yang Tidak Dijual (The Unsold Gulai) from 1990s children magazine named Bobo.

In the first session, the artist built one to one conversations with the participants about their favorite food when they grew up, who cooked for them and their preference for protein. The artist opened a cookbook titled Mustikarasa that was previously owned by her late grandmother. Mustikarasa was the only state cookbook and initially published in 1967 with the influence of president Soekarno’s national identity pride and also his notion of food sovereignty.

As a result of the conversation, she wrote one of the gulai recipes from the book that suited the participant’s appetite on a piece of card. In the second performance, she recited the story of the unsold gulai for the bigger audience. The story centered in a curious case of the poor woman who does not want to sell the aromatic gulai she was cooking to the persistent wealthy neighbors, even at any price offered too her. It turned out that she cooked a rat as her last option to survive.

Gulai the performance is an attempt to pass down a memory, then reviving what has forgotten thoughtfully.