Talks
Gruesome Grub
Andreas Ahrens, Shilpa Vijayakrishnan
What is the one thing you would be horrified to see served to you at a dinner party? What is the food combination you love that has raised some serious eyebrows? Challenging such notions of what is and isn’t edible, with an exhibit that has 80 of the world’s most ‘disgusting’ foods and tickets that double as barf bags, is the Disgusting Food Museum in Malmö, Sweden.
Join us for a conversation with its director, Andreas Ahrens, who speaks to Shilpa Vijayakrishnan about how the idea for the Museum came about, the qualifications for a ‘disgusting’ food, and the challenges of running a museum that boasts a tasting bar where some of the foods are made fresh every week. In the process, they explore how social and cultural contexts shape our perceptions of food, as delicious, strange, exotic and ‘disgusting’, and the politics of such perceptions.
Curated as part of the programming around the online exhibition Stories on a Banana Leaf.
Bookings
Bookings are closed for this event.
Andreas Ahrens
Museum Director, Disgusting Food Museum
Andreas Ahrens has a background in IT, running several startups in Sweden for the last 20 years. He has a strong interest in food and has travelled the world since his childhood. He lived in the Philippines for three years before moving back to Sweden. Andreas started the Disgusting Food Museum with his friend Samuel West in 2018 and is now the sole owner of the museum. The only food in the museum that ever made him vomit was Balut, the duck fetus served in its own egg.
Shilpa Vijaykrishnan
Head of Education & Outreach, MAP
Shilpa Vijayakrishnan has led the Education & Outreach Department at MAP since its conception, during the course of which she has curated over five exhibitions specially designed for younger audiences, as well as conceptualised and facilitated a range of programmes for schools, children and adults. Former editor of the Tasveer Journal, her articles have been published in publications including the eponymous print edition of the Tasveer Journal, Maharanis: Royal Women of India, Gardens of the Mind: Swapak Nayak and Gilles Bensimon and Figures in Time: Bourne & Shepherd. She holds a postgraduate degree in Arts & Aesthetics from the Jawaharlal Nehru University and has curated online narratives for MAP on the Google Arts & Culture platform on a range of subjects including Women in Hindi Cinema and the Pichwai painting tradition, among others.
