Yoghurt, Biryani, Memories and knowledge come and go and pass through your guts, particularly in an Asian household. The physical body is a fleeting archive; it can hold, breed, process and store feelings and trauma. The Artist Jasleen Kaur wanted to depict this digestion cycle through a perishable archival book. The essence of the project was to contain and archive conversations between first, second and third-generation South Asian immigrant women and gender non-conforming people based in Rochdale. The conversations were centred around the human body being a carrier of histories, cultures and knowledge. Together, we decided to print their stories on Seed Paper that would later be returned to the soil and flourish into a living organism once again. The book was designed to hold translations in Urdu as well as giving a nod to nostalgic everyday Pakistani household items.
Collaborators:
Jasleen Kaur
Lucy Shanahan
Plaintiff.press
Timeline:
September 2020 – October 2021
During our MA at the Royal College of Art, we interviewed Jasleen on her opinions of the art and design industry regarding decolonisation. A few years later she reached out to us to collaborate on this book.