Anti-caste herstories: Re-cognising the unrecognised embodied ancestral knowledge of dalit womxn

Purity and pollution are central to casteist oppression; accordingly, the spatiality, crafts, food and touch formed by a dalit body are considered 'untouchable'.

Counter to casteist untouchability, this project, embedded in values of dalit feminist resistance, will utilise Participatory Action Research - PAR (Baum et al 2006) through the re-cognising ofdalit cooking and caste-assigned makings.

PAR will inform practice-based, engaged workshops instigating non-hierarchical dialogue which will manifest a practice-based Anti-Caste Feminist Pedagogy, operating through object/recipe biographies and spatial/material archive. Further, the project will result in an auto-theoretical thesis and a travelling installation.

This tactile/textual output will be a culmination of shared dalit agency which will continue to grow as it moves through domestic or institutional spaces spreading anti-caste consciousness developed by dalit womxns' ancestral collective knowledge within and beyond art academia.