LT
On Wednesday, 9 October at 6pm, the OVEN PAVILION at the SODAS 2123 cultural complex invites everyone to a pani puri dinner hosted by artist Malka Sultan 🔥
Food is a fundamental part of human life, engaging all our senses: taste, smell, sight, hearing, and touch. Unlike visual or sound art, which typically stimulates just one sense, food offers a unique, multisensory experience, allowing us to explore foreignness through integrated sensory encounters. Every recipe, whether traditional or reinvented, tells its own story. In this blend of contrasts, we navigate which traditions to keep and which to adapt, considering how much to preserve or mix. While people from different cultures will often have varied tastes, advances in communication, travel, and access to information are bringing these tastes closer together.
The ‘choreography’ of eating pani puri is a delightful and somewhat intricate process that can vary slightly depending on personal preferences and regional customs. Here is a step-by-step guide to the traditional way of enjoying this popular Indian street food:
🥨 Puri: A small, hollow, crispy sphere made from semolina or wheat flour.
🥨 Filling: Typically consists of a mixture of boiled potatoes, chickpeas, and spices.
🥨 Pani (Flavoured Water): A tangy, spicy water made with tamarind, mint, coriander, and various spices.
Eating pani puri is not just about the taste but also the fun and social experience of communal eating, often shared with friends and family at street stalls or home gatherings. Each step is a tactile and sensory delight, making it a unique culinary choreography.
Malka Sultan, a Yemen-born interdisciplinary artist currently residing in Vilnius and Bombay, explores profound themes of alienation through diverse forms of expression, including text, performance art, and culinary processes.
A writer based in Vilnius for the past five years, Malka focuses on themes of alienation, diasporic identity, and immigration. Malka writes auto-fictional and biographical stories, with her research rooted in influential works such as Pedagogy of the Oppressed and The Wretched of the Earth.
During the COVID pandemic in Vilnius, when facing extreme alienation, Malka turned to a pen and food ingredients as her most accessible mediums of expression. Being half-Yemeni and half-Indian, she began to see food not just as a means of survival, but as an artistic medium capable of creating impact. This fresh perspective revealed food’s power to engage all human senses, even taking on the form of immersive theatre.
➡️ The event is free of charge and open to all visitors.
The event is part of the Oven Pavilion’s public events programme, organised through an open call.
Oven Pavilion, Cultural Complex SODAS 2123, Vitebsko Str. 21, Vilnius
The Oven Pavilion is an interactive architectural sculpture, serving as a public space for community gatherings, education, events, and other activities. This work is a collaboration between interdisciplinary artist Kamilė Krasauskaitė and architects Ona Lozuraitytė and Petras Išora. The structure harmoniously combines the ideas of the three creators, functionality, and the surrounding environment – integrating the oven, the architects’ pavilion around it, and the space it occupies. This project, part of the Vilnius City Municipality’s Create Vilnius (Kuriu Vilnių) programme, reflects the needs of the local communities, creating a new focal point in the city that activates and enhances public space.
Creators of the Oven Pavilion: by Kamilė Krasauskaitė, Ona Lozuraitytė, Petras Išora
Architects: Ona Lozuraitytė-Išorė, Petras Išora-Lozuraitis
Author of the Oven and Programme Curator: Kamilė Krasauskaitė
Oven Builder: Vytautas Kazimieras Narbutas
Project Manager: Vitalija Jasaitė
Producers: Vitalija Jasaitė, Danutė Gambickaitė
Production Coordinator: Eglė Kliučinskaitė
Assisting Architect: Gabrielius Dovydėnas
Event Programme Coordinators: Neda Rimaitė, Gabrielė Voidė
Music Programme Coordinator: Benas Trakimas
Communication Coordinator: Gustė Grigaliūtė
Graphic Designer: Tauras Stalnionis
Vertėja ir kalbos redaktorė: Alexandra Bondarev
Special thanks to: Ieva Bagdonaitė, Jurgis Paškevičius, Virginijus Šakalis, Martynas Mockevičius, Agnė Kučerenkaitė, UAB Emadas
Organiser: Cultural Complex SODAS 2123
Sponsors: Vilnius City Municipality, Lithuanian Council for Culture, Ballooning.lt
IMPORTANT INFORMATION
The event will be filmed and photographed. Videos and/or photographs taken during the event may be published and broadcast live on the Organiser’s social networks (Facebook, Instagram, YouTube), website, as well as other advertising or information dissemination media.