Food of London

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Food Love

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Food of London * Food Love *

FL: Food of London, Food Love is a curatorial-research project under the theme navigators that investigates how food mediates identity, memory, and belonging within diasporic communities. The project emerged from an intensive study of London’s multicultural food markets—culminating in a live public performance titled FL: Food of London, Food Love. This interdisciplinary work blended poetry, storytelling, and performative readings over a shared sensory experience.

The performance served as the heart of the project, threading together voices, recipes, and rhythms of the city into a collaborative poem. It invited audiences to sit across from the artists at a dining table, transforming the act of reading into a ritual of mutual recognition. Inspired by food theorists and feminist writing practices, the work questioned authorship, temporality, and the politics of taste—offering food not only as nourishment, but as a map of cultural crossings. The project’s legacy lives on through installations, illustrated booklets, and a sound-based archive.

- To examine food markets as sensory, cultural, and political spaces within post-colonial London.
- To foster intercultural dialogue through collaborative writing and public performance.
- Psychogeography: exploring urban landscapes through drifting, walking, and sensory mapping
- Creaive site writing and embodied text practices
- Post-colonial academic case studies
- Non-fictional literary studies
- Short-form interviews and voice recordings
- On-site and studio-based photo documentation
- Multisensory toolkit: Touch | Taste | Hear | Sight | Smell | Write
- Culinary memory and emotional geography
- Street food cultures and urban belonging
- Post-colonial identity and migration narratives
- Writing as a form of spatial and affective cartography
- Individual writings, then paired with exchanged authorship in performativity
- Poetic dialogue and live performance text
- Sensory and spatial narrative mapping
- FJ: Food of a London, Food Love – illustrated booklet series
- A collaborative public performance at RCA

Black and white photo of a man smiling and giving a thumbs-up at a street market stall, with a yellow apron. Colorful tomatoes at a market stand labeled 'Street Food Union, Rupert Street, Soho' and a takeout container of food on a street surface labeled 'Whitecross Street Market' are also visible.

Read: Oh! Lamb & Aubergine

Individual Writing

Oh! Lamb and Aubergine?! traces the emotional topography of London’s food markets. Blending psychogeography with post-colonial critique, the piece explores how street food serves both as comfort and confrontation. Through personal recollection and poetic inquiry, it asks: what does it mean to taste home in translation?

Poem with the last line emphasizing feeling hungry, the rest of the poem describes the warmth of kitchens and the heat of sunshine.

A page of handwritten text with decorative lines and a yellow vertical line on the left. The text is a poetic description of tasting foods and spices, including kebabs, fries with cheese, pizza, coriander, and spice, with reflections on taste and aroma.

Publication

Cover of a book titled 'Food Love of Food in London' with colorful letters and a large, stylized 3D 'FJ' in the center. The authors' names are Nayanika Singh and Saskyanna Permyakova.

Open magazine spread with colorful illustrations and text about London's food and love, including a pink cocktail with a straw and garnish, and a drawing of a decorated plate with food.

FL is a creative piece of writing born out of the love and appreciation the two writers have for the food found in and around the city of London. An interpersonal narration centring around the authors' culinary memories reflected through a mélange of segments of their individual written works. A synthesis of Nayanika's retrospection and Saskyyana's introspection of the food they have experienced within the boundaries of London. In the end, all this is encapsulated within the simple question: what does London taste like?

Download FL

Collaborative Performance

Food of London | Food Love is a live collaborative performance set around a picnic table, where two writers walk through London’s street food markets in each other’s shoes—literally and literarily. By reading and responding to each other’s texts, the performance questions authorship, identity, and the evolving ownership of food cultures.

The work blends poetry, psychogeography, and sensory memory to reimagine gastronomy as a site of both colonial residue and commercial reinvention. As the authors deconstruct and reconstruct their writings into one shared poem, the audience is invited into a space of emotional resonance, mnemonic triggers, and a quietly political reckoning with fusion cuisine.

A woman reading a black and white illustrated brochure with text and drawings, standing against a plain white wall.

Site-Based Intervention

In-situ Prototyping: As part of a proposed spatial intervention for the Talking Point Gallery at the Museum of London, a series of in-situ prototypes were developed to simulate audience engagement and curatorial storytelling. These included:

Illustrated Booklets distributed to visitors, featuring poetic narratives such as Oh! Lamb and Aubergine?!, encouraging reflection through take-home creative writing.
Introductory Panels and Mini Printer Walls, where visitors could print their food-related memories to contribute to a living archive.
Post-it Note Activity Walls, designed to boost audience participation by inviting them to respond to prompts such as “How does London’s taste talk to your memory?”
Audio Installation replicating the original spoken-word performance, creating an immersive and multi-sensory encounter.

Miniature model of a dining room setup with a round table covered with a black-and-white checkered tablecloth, two white chairs, jewelry on the table, and pink and yellow sticky notes on a white wall with the heading "Food of London, Food Love."

Miniature art installation of an exhibition booth titled 'Food,' with a black wall displaying curators' names and description, and another white wall with a blurred artwork, set on a white surface.