Curry in bed? How queer
Q: When is a cake decorated with a chicken kebab not a cake decorated with a chicken kebab?
A: When it's a metaphor for being both Asian and gay. Of course.
Artists will be giving out the delcious-sounding kebab-cakes as part of a Manchester project called 'Mixing It Up: Queering Curry Mile and Currying Canal Street'.
As artist Alpesh Patel explains, "The visual image of the chicken tikka confuses the expected bodily sensation of eating the cakes. It's a metaphor for how we typically respond to visual stimuli of perceived 'South Asian' or 'gay' subjects in the city and for how deeply visual images are intertwined with all of our other senses."
Also part of the installation will be a series of beds displayed across Manchester which have been decorated with conversations with South Asian women who describe themselves as lesbian, bisexual, transgendered, or queer.
See one of the beds at Sangam Restaurant, Wilmslow Road, Manchester, from 2 to 14 October. The bed will be covered with incence and Urdu poetry, and is described as 'pink', but whether that refers to the colour or the sensibility is unclear.
