“Come Eat With Me” Performance at the 51st Annual Conference on South Asia
Sultan (1054 Williamson Street)
October 21, 2023 @ 6:15 pm
This performance is sold out
About the performance:
Come Eat With Me is a 110-minute performance piece by Sri Vamsi Matta which explores the relationship between caste and food and culminates in sharing a meal together. Focusing on Dalit relationships to food, the piece begins with personal stories and oral histories around food in Vamsi’s household and community and is peppered with existing literature and academic writing around the multilayered, multi-flavored nuances between caste and food. The piece unpacks questions of oppression and solidarity, grief and joy, and the everyday victories of the human spirit in the face of structural injustices.
Taking place on the last night of the Annual Conference on South Asia (Saturday, Oct 21), this gathering invites conference attendees and Madison’s community to Sultan, Madison’s first modern Pakistani cuisine restaurant to eat together and share stories around caste and food. In doing so, the form subverts an activity laden with caste hierarchies and hopes to create a space for community building.
About the Artist:
Vamsi (Sri Vamsi Matta) is an award winning Bangalore-based theatre and visual artist. Vamsi is the inaugural academic year-long Interdisciplinary Artist-in-Residence for 2023–24 at the Division of the Arts. Awards. His practice is influenced by his Dalit identity, experience and location. Dalit is the political identity of communities formerly known as “untouchable” and considered the lowest within the Hindu Caste System, and thus oppressed by its discriminatory scriptures, social structures and norms. The identity, and histories of his community and family, inform the questions, topics and mediums that Vamsi engages with through his work. While in Madison, Vamsi is excited to engage with UW Madison’s own reckoning with historic inequities and contributing to its present campus culture goals of fostering a greater sense of inclusion and belonging through the arts.