There’s The Last Supper, Leonardo da Vinci’s artistic representation of the most iconic meal in the history of humankind. More than five centuries later is Anjolie Ela Menon’s mural Upaj, the story of every Indian supper – actually every meal by every Indian. It is a weaving of the rich diversity of India in its abundance, fecundity, rituals of food, and the feminine principle.

Through the dawn of ages, women have been associated with rituals of food and family. Various positions in women’s discourses have aligned themselves either in the agreement or in contention with it. But food culture continues to be a feminine signifier of community sharing, abundance, and of the ethics of care. This feminine ethos, and the regenerative powers of earth sustaining life, converge in the human imagination and iconography as the Great mother, Earth Mother, Devi Annapurna or in the Vedic concept of the Purusha and Prakriti. 

Women today stand as a beacon of hope against the culture of consumerism, individualism, and hyperreality resulting in a hollow simulacrum of humanity by presenting an alternate model of care. In their functions within the family and community, rural or urban, they still project a holistic and sustainable vision of the inter-relationship of earth and its inhabitants. Women’s activity is geared towards a balancing of the various elements in her ecosystem and towards sustainable development. This is unequivocally demonstrated in the associations of food culture with sharing, healing, partaking, and ultimately with regeneration and life itself. 

Completed in 2019, Upaj is a remarkable interpretation of such a holistic vision. It is a visual feast combining the earthy elements as well as the ethereal into a….
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