The Story of Somafruit

Location: Museum am Rothenbaum (MARKK), Hamburg, Germany. 

Part of the group exhibition Tausend Töpfe: Was Essen uns angeht, 2025

Material: Artificial Gold Leaf on Wall, botanical illustration, map with overhead video projection, Portrait of Narad- Cyanotype photographic print, Artefacts (Imitation fruits) from South Asia Collection, MARKK. 

This installation was conceived within the framework of the exhibition about food and its meaning through a post-colonial lens in the ethnological museum of Hamburg, Germany. 

This installation emerged out of my year long engagement with the South Asia collection at MARKK and particularly the artefacts from India. I was inspired by the imitation fruits that were donated to the museum as artefacts around 1880. 

This work is part of my ongoing exploration of decolonial narratives, focusing on how objects, stories, and artifacts hold layers of meaning that extend beyond their colonial contexts. 'Somafruit' is a mythical fruit from my ongoing project featuring 'Narad,' an itinerant polymath from India who traveled to Europe in the 17th century. A fruit, I believe, is a symbol of desire and exchange, embodies histories of migration, knowledge transfer, and exploitation—echoing the colonial legacies embedded in museum collections today.