Frickin’ Fridges

Gitanjali Dang

BB Oris is a doctor of immense repute. You’d be hard pressed to find an oral cavity he has left uninspected.

The much-revered doctor is not a man of the arts. He is a man obsessed with halitosis. Some have gone so far as to suggest that he suffers from an acute case of halitophobia. Be that as it may, this phobia has yet to come in the way of his foremost mission, that of ridding the world of halitosis.

Now it appears that yours truly played a key role in rigging up the early interactions between Dr Oris and Sanjeev Khandekar & Vaishali Narkar.

In 2008, the artists embarked on a new project entitled Bad Breath. At the time they had no way of knowing that just that one work would cause their lives to take a very dramatic turn. But things shifted on their axis when one representative of this as yet, ongoing body of work by Sanjeev & Vaishali partook of an exhibition this humble curator-critic had formulated.

Lured by the title, Dr Oris came over to have a see and found himself repeatedly fiddling with the question, “Do these artists suffer from halitosis?”.

Not a man known for subtlety, he requested an inspection of the suspect mouths. Having nothing to hide, the artists obliged readily. The doctor’s disappointment on not finding any objectionable effluvium emanating from their mouths was further compounded by his zealous positivist leanings. He found the artists’ conjectures vis-à-vis the provenance of halitosis dubious; he refused to believe that he had been wrongly accusing stomach, mouth and the like.

He could not bring himself to defer to these leaps of artistic imagination, exacerbated by what he deemed the visual rhetoric of the artwork.

More than a touch affronted, Sanjeev & Vaishali couldn’t believe their luck, but they were keen on building their case. After making cursory inquiries into Oris’ fridge and its contents they got themselves invited to his apartment, to carry out a first hand appraisal of his mammoth 550 litre refrigerator. On reaching their destination, they systematically scrutinised its contents.

The artworks in this show are in fact, a documentation of and reaction to Dr Oris’ highly stocked refrigerator.

The unearthly glow radiated by the machine creates the impression that it is a free-floating galactic creature, which has only recently journeyed to Earth. In rejigging the anatomy of the aforementioned creature, the artists aren’t attempting to realise a new chapter for Cubism. Their modest intensions include, highlighting the nonlinearity of the problems surrounding everyday grub. The refrigerator may be a neatly compartmentalised unit, but problems are never airtight, they like spilling all over, and they take the idiom, the more the merrier, very seriously. The unlikely, almost sloppily slapped together structures found in these artworks complement this scenario.

What looks like a refrigerator full of goodies, could in reality be one gigantic carbon footprint.

Having unloaded the freight from its glitzy container, the three squatted on the floor. What looked like a campfire setup, complete with piles of food and litres of liquids, would soon transform into the site of a testy interaction.

The artists’ noses were ever alert to the smells exuded by the farrago of products they had just rescued from the back rows of the refrigerator.

Sanjeev disdainfully held up a packet of frozen peas. The look on his face said it all. But since the reader wasn’t privy to the look, allow me to do a translation.

The look on Sanjeev’s face read thus, “The refrigerator is symptomatic of our racy routine, where convenience is a lifestyle choice. In colluding with convenience, we forego all concerns about our general wellbeing and get caught up in advertising jargon that touts frozen peas as fresh peas. The unlikely bounties of consumerism draw us to densely packed supermarket aisles and keep our bellies busy with knots of self-defecating confusion.”

The contents of the refrigerator reminded the artists of what they had always known. If ever there had been any doubts about the origins of halitosis, they were all perfectly placated now. There is indeed something rotten in the state of the fridge.

Dr Oris had obviously taken the liberalisation of food imports to heart, or in this case to teeth. French cheese, Swiss jam, Chilean wine, Australian apples, Italian olives, Icelandic vodka, Kobe beef. The works.

Our man was collecting food miles and how. If food miles could be traded in for air miles Dr Oris could travel to the moon and back for nothing.

Also present were strong representatives from the fora of packaged vegetables. Diced to that perfect bite size, rest assured these veggies would strain no mouth when eaten. The variety of meats pulled out of that refrigerator, could, however, seriously strain the environment. As though the greenhouse gases that would get emitted during the preparation of these meats weren’t enough, some of the meats had been imported from as away as Norway and Japan. Food miles alert. Food miles alert.

Dr Oris’ fridge needed an urgent flossing.

By this point the doctor was fastly losing patience and also he couldn’t endure to see his beloved food sweat it out in the Bombay heat. He got up, dusted his pants and started to return the contents to their cool abode.

Oris’ biggest fear was that the proselytising artists had ulterior motives. He was okay with giving their cuckoo theories a listen but he was afraid that the two wanted to get their hands on his research. In its final stages, the doctor was of the belief that his breakthrough research would do away with halitosis forever.

Vaishali took her cue, arched her eyebrow and added by way of a concluding thought, “Dr Oris, we’re not suggesting you stop eating food that has travelled a few hundred miles to get here. Or you stop eating meat all together. All we’re saying is that you be aware of what’s in your fridge and subsequently on your plate. Because no matter what your research proves, to our minds there is no denying the fact that your refrigerator stinks to the high heaven.”

Almost certain he didn’t want the artists to get away with having the final thought Dr Oris intoned, “I know you are the organic-food-masticating types who think that anyone who isn’t, is a lesser mortal. And although I don’t buy anything you’ve said this evening and I certainly won’t let it sabotage the international recognition I’m set to gain because of my research, I will leave you this evening with an edifying thought. For the last six months, I have made the effort to drive down to the weekend organic food market. The round trip takes me over two hours but I’m on it, I’m with it and all this because I care for the environment.”

The artists were stupefied. Not knowing an appropriate response to this inane act, they departed.

Bombay, March 2010

Gitanjali Dang is an independent curator and critic. In her various projects and writings, she has been interested in engaging with a post-Duchampian sense of humour and caprice. At the other end of her curatorial spectrum, has been an enduring interest in epistemology and its several offshoots such as language, science, technology and art. Furthermore, she is always looking to get the above-mentioned ends to dovetail.