News
August 9, 2025 - July, 2026
CALORIE
Science Gallery Bengaluru, Bangalore, Karnataka, India
This year-long exhibition explores humanity’s intimate yet fraught relationship with food through arts and sciences
Calorie has captured our notions of quantifying energy in food for more than a century. Food was considered fuel. In the eighteenth century, Antoine Lavoisier proposed that respiration is combustion, no different from a candle burning, and devised an ice calorimeter to house a guinea pig to test his theory! Nicolas Clément-Desormes coined “calorie” in relation to heat engines. A century later, Wilbur Atwater went on to calculate the energy values of foods which remain in use today.
Why count calories? The first reasons were to manage absenteeism and loss of productivity in workhouses. Bread, meat, and leisure, earlier argued for as concerns of justice, became matters of efficiency and cost. Food became uniform and comparable between people, nations, and time periods: it became the state’s obligation to manage food inventory and the dietary needs of the population. Food became comparable between bodies and twentieth century diet fads took off!
Food is not only fuel. Our understanding of the composition of food and how the body processes it has moved on. A simple model of combustion has been replaced by a complex understanding of nutrition and nutrigenomics. Numbers logged in your fit-bit or food labels are at best honest guesses. It is no longer simply true that to “lose weight you must use up more calories than you take in.”
Science Gallery Bengaluru (SGB) is a not-for-profit public institution for research-based engagement targeted at young adults working at the intersection of the human, natural, and social sciences, and engineering, art, and design.
SGB’s public engagement model moves beyond participation, and towards proactive involvement through ever-changing research festivals anchored by interdisciplinary exhibitions, programmes, and public events consisting of research-based engagements led by artists and scholars from diverse backgrounds. SGB is established with the founding support of the Government of Karnataka and three academic partners—Indian Institute of Science, National Centre for Biological Sciences, and Srishti Institute of Art, Design and Technology. Science Gallery Bengaluru is part of the Science Gallery International Network pioneered by Trinity College Dublin
September 12, 2026 - October 10, 2026
Group exhibition of the finalists' artworks of Premio Luigi Candiani (artisti affermati)
SAC Spazio Arte Contemporanea, Robecchetto con Induno, Milan, Italy
Opening on September 12 at 6.00 p.m.
My article "Topografie della speranza" in R-ESISTENZE mag "Save the World – Connecting Cultures. Practical knowledge networks for possible worlds" by Albertina Press and Gli Ori.
The new 2025-26 anthology of R-ESISTENZE. Different ethical and artistic cultures, published by Albertina Press – Gli Ori, is now available, dedicated to the theme "Save the World – Connecting Cultures. Practical knowledge networks for possible worlds".
It was exhibited at the Arte Fiera in Bologna at the Gli Ori editions stand and presented as a digital preview on January 21st at the international conference Sympoiesis Symposium at the Albertina, in the panel dedicated to art journals and publications from Italian academies. A 212-page volume, rich in images and texts by artists, scholars, professors, and students from academies and universities (with abstracts in English), offering an in-depth and up-to-date overview of national and international artistic and cultural research on the themes of the environment, community building, peace, and rights. The volume will be presented at the Accademia Albertina in Turin on March 18th at 3:30 pm, in Salone d'Onore, as part of the events of the PNRR ARWE – INAR (Italian Network of Artistic Research) project.