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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 A simple model of combustion has been replaced by a complex understanding of nutrition and nutrigenomics.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
Exhibition with my artwork Cavallette
Book of Social Art Award 2025 – Planetary Healing: Blue Tribes for Ocean Health
The Social Art Award 2025 – Planetary Healing: Blue Tribes for Ocean Health was officially launched during the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP30) in Belém, Brazil, on 17 November 2025.
The publication presents the Top 100 international entries from this year’s award, alongside essays, interviews, and reflections from artists, curators, and thought leaders around the world. It captures the diversity and urgency of artistic visions addressing the interconnected challenges of ocean health, social transformation, and collective regeneration.
The book launch and dialogue took place as part of the COP30 program, co-organized by the Institute for Art and Innovation (IFAI) together with the Alliance for Youth-Led Futures (AYLF) including partnerships on site with the WHO Youth Council, and Youth4Planet.
Featuring in R-ESISTENZE mag Artificiale/Naturale by Albertina Press and Gli Ori.