KULAM: A Feast of Culture in Fort Kochi

As twilight settles over Fort Kochi’s waterfront, the air thickens with anticipation. The Cochin Club, a colonial-era landmark built in 1914, is preparing to host a festival that promises to be as much about ideas as it is about flavours. KULAM – Culture, Art & Food – is not a conventional food festival. It is a gathering where food becomes a lens through which culture, memory, and resistance are explored, and where communities are invited to imagine futures shaped by shared values rather than economic imperatives.  

Kulam, meaning “community” in Malayalam, is a word that resonates deeply in Kerala’s cultural imagination. It evokes belonging, collective responsibility, and the joy of shared experience. Over two evenings in late March, this spirit will infuse the Cochin Club, transforming its colonial architecture into a site of renewal. Once reserved exclusively for the English community in British Cochin, the club now becomes a stage for dialogue, dissent, and creativity. Its layered history provides a fitting backdrop for a festival that seeks to decolonise modes of perception and participation in the arts.  

At the heart of KULAM is the idea that food is more than sustenance or pleasure. It is memory served on a plate, ritual folded into recipes, and resistance simmered into spice. Food becomes a radical curatorial material, capable of unsettling exhibition norms and rethinking institutional roles. In this space, chefs, artists, and writers are freed from boundaries, encouraged instead to experiment, revive, and renew.  

The festival draws inspiration from Silvia Federici’s conception of the commons—resources held collectively, nurtured by communities. KULAM translates this philosophy into a sensorial experience. Imagine a contact zone where flavours mingle with stories, where the act of eating becomes an act of dialogue. Here, food is not simply consumed; it is performed, narrated, and interrogated. It becomes a museum without walls, curated not by institutions but by lived interactions.  

This conceptual foundation is enriched by ideas of curatorial equality and contact zones. The festival envisions itself as a dynamic, open museum of lived exchanges, where hierarchies dissolve and collective inquiry thrives. Food, familiar yet radical, becomes the medium through which the public engages with artistic and cultural expressions. By grounding the experience in a shared sensory language, KULAM resists institutional constraints and offers instead a platform for dialogue and dissent.  

The questions posed by the festival are urgent and fundamental: Who are we, as humans, as citizens, as custodians of heritage, and as challengers of dominant narratives? How do we eat, live, and relate to one another? Can food, as commons, reimagine how public space is created and shared? These questions linger in the air, inviting participants to taste the answers.  

In Fort Kochi, a region marked by plural inheritances and layered histories, KULAM assumes an ontological role—a living space where imagination and experience converge to construct new worlds. Food becomes a tool of experimentation, enabling participants to reframe historical narratives and envision alternative futures. It is both a contemporary art form and a custodian of intangible heritage, capable of breaking down social boundaries and redefining how we share and inhabit culture.  

The Cochin Club itself adds a layer of resonance. Built in 1914, it was once a bastion of exclusivity, reserved for the English community. Today, it stands as a distinctive landmark in Fort Kochi’s historic landscape, its architecture shaped by colonial influence. Through KULAM, each part of the club is woven into a rich cultural experience, bringing communities together to celebrate history and heritage through the lens of food. The transformation of this space is symbolic: what was once exclusive now becomes inclusive, a commons where diverse voices converge.  

The festival’s programming reflects this ethos. Over two days, artists, writers, and thinkers from across Kerala and beyond will gather to explore food’s many meanings. From recipes to resistance, from land to language, food becomes the thread that weaves together diverse stories and shared experiences. The conversations are expected to be as rich as the flavours, touching on themes of equity, identity, and the politics of place.  

By treating food as commons, KULAM also draws attention to other shared resources—air, water, land—and the collective responsibilities they invoke. In doing so, the festival performs a language of equity and shared presence, resisting the erasure of local identities and reclaiming the politics of place. It is a reminder that food is inseparable from the environment, and that the act of eating is always entangled with questions of sustainability and justice.  

The sensory dimension of the festival cannot be overstated. Imagine the aromas of spices wafting through the colonial halls of the Cochin Club, mingling with the sounds of conversation and the rhythms of performance. Imagine the textures of dishes that carry centuries of memory, served alongside contemporary artistic expressions that challenge and provoke. The atmosphere will be one of immersion, where taste, sound, and sight converge to create a multisensory experience.  

Yet KULAM is not simply about indulgence. It is about rethinking how we inhabit culture. By positioning food as a vessel for storytelling and a site of resistance, the festival challenges dominant narratives and proposes new possibilities for art and cultural practice. It resists hierarchies, offering instead a platform for collective inquiry. It is a space where imagination and experience converge, where food becomes the thread weaving together diverse communities into shared worlds.  

The festival’s ambition is clear: to look forward to a shared future shaped by cultural practitioners who see the arts as a civic space. It calls on institutions to uphold shared values over economic imperatives, to centre the collective dimensions of human experience. In doing so, KULAM positions itself not just as a festival but as a proposition—a vision of what culture can be when rooted in community and commons.  

As Fort Kochi prepares to host this celebration, the significance of KULAM extends beyond its two-day duration. It is a reminder that food, in all its complexity, is a powerful medium for dialogue, dissent, and renewal. It is a vessel for memory, a site of resistance, and a tool for imagining alternative futures. In the layered histories of Fort Kochi, KULAM becomes a living space where culture, art, and food converge to construct new worlds.  

In the end, KULAM is not just about what we eat, but about how we live, how we share, and how we imagine. It is about tasting the future, one flavour at a time, and recognising that the most powerful stories are often those we share across a table.  

Princess Pea, the alter ego of Indian artist Natasha Preenja, has been named the winner of the inaugural Swali Craft Prize. The jury selected her for a body of work that interrogates gender, identity and self-worth through an unusual mix of satire, performance, and craft. Trained as a painter, Princess Pea moves fluidly across drawing, sculpture, photography and live intervention, often extending her practice through collaborations rooted in traditional techniques. Her distinctive approach, which probes how femininity and social roles are constructed and consumed, aligns closely with the ethos of the Chanakya School of Craft, which places women’s education, intergenerational learning and the transmission of inherited knowledge at its core.

Karishma Swali and the Chanakya Foundation, in partnership with India Art Fair, have introduced the Swali Craft Prize as an homage to the enduring and evolving language of craft. Conceived to recognise craftsmanship as both technical mastery and profound expression, the award is grounded in conceptual clarity, cultural resonance and sustainable practice. It celebrates artists who honour heritage while engaging the contemporary moment, advocating for ethical forms of production and knowledge-sharing that ensure traditions are carried forward. Through this lens, the Prize seeks to dissolve entrenched hierarchies between craft and fine art, reframing craft not as a static legacy but as an urgent and vibrant force within cultural discourse.

The winner of the inaugural edition will receive a grant of INR 11,00,000 and a fully supported month-long residency at the Chanakya School of Craft in Mumbai, offering time, mentorship and resources to develop new work. The residency will culminate in an exhibition of final works at India Art Fair 2026 in New Delhi, with the possibility of travelling thereafter to a significant venue within India or abroad. For Princess Pea, the recognition arrives at a moment when the fields of craft, design and contemporary art are beginning to intersect with renewed seriousness, creating space for practices that challenge conventions while honouring the labour of making.