shape-shifting creative practitioner
The Killjoy Cooking Network is an oral, written, subliminal, and sometimes imagined web of stories and recipes that reveal the relationship between food and women's labor. Since 2017, I have been asking women about their experience as primary caregivers in patriarchal family structures. It is nearly impossible to ask such a question directly. The shared experience of cooking and exchanging recipes becomes a carrier bag for this conversation.
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Killjoy Cooking Network was published in compost.digital in 2021 and has its own dedicated website here.
 The Kitchen Maze, for Compost.digital |  Cover Photo for Re:Sister |  Annapurna and Muthamma make Jolar de Roti |
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 Sheer Kurma by Ruksana Nazneen |  A letter from my great-grandmother to my grandmother in 1958 |
In March 2020, I began such an exchange with my mother-in-law, Dr. Mrinalini Sebastian. I wondered what it would mean for us to exchange recipes for dishes we grew up eating. We began exchanging recipes through email, which were often accompanied by stories of the women who fed and raised us. They were stories of love, generosity and resilience. In a reality that perpetuates narratives of 'women are women's worst enemies', can these exchanges then become a testament to long-lasting, intergenerational and feminist relationships?
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In 2021, we decided to ask this question to our own network of friends, family and peers. The Killjoy Cooking Network invites women to hold space for conversations, for each other, to look deeper into our relationships with food, labour and care. To ask, who fed us? To document the stories of women who cared for us, through our own memories of them.
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Killjoy Cooking Network has gathered over 20 recipes and letters since 2021. The Killjoy Cooks Recipe book Vol. 1 features a selection of 8 recipes from the network.
