THE FEEDER
In The Feeder, Kawita Vatanajyankur transforms her face into a living rice ladle, endlessly serving dish after dish in a repetitive cycle of nourishment and labour. Through this absurd yet familiar gesture, the work reflects on the often-invisible forms of care that sustain everyday life.
The act of feeding has long been associated with women’s roles within the home: preparing meals, providing comfort, and maintaining the emotional fabric of the family. Yet this labour is rarely recognised as work. It unfolds quietly through daily repetition, becoming so deeply embedded within social structures that it often disappears from view. In The Feeder, the body becomes both utensil and worker, collapsing the boundary between person and tool, care and production.
As rice is continuously served, the gesture expands beyond the domestic sphere. The work evokes not only the family dining table but also the canteen, cafeteria, and communal kitchen—spaces where countless unseen hands nourish larger communities. Feeding becomes a collective act that sustains schools, workplaces, hospitals, factories, and societies at large. The endless circulation of food mirrors the endless circulation of care upon which social life depends.
By transforming her own body into an instrument of service, Vatanajyankur asks viewers to reconsider the value of reproductive and emotional labour. The work honours those whose daily acts of nourishment—whether physical, emotional, or social—remain essential yet frequently overlooked. Through repetition, The Feeder reveals care not as a private gesture, but as an invisible infrastructure that holds communities together.
The Feeder incorporates the sounds of cooked rice, clattering plates, forks, and spoons. These sounds function as traces of human presence. They evoke the communal rituals of eating and gathering, situating the work within the social environments that depend upon acts of feeding and care.
The repetitive sounds of serving and dining transform the space into a domestic kitchen, a school canteen, a workplace cafeteria, or a communal dining hall. They remind viewers that nourishment is never an isolated act but part of a larger social system sustained through continuous labour. While the body performs the physical gesture of serving, the surrounding soundscape reveals the network of people, relationships, and routines that this labour supports.
Edition of 4+3 AP