For his third show in the city, multidisciplinary artist and chef Eeshaan Kashyap blurs the lines between food, art, and design to redefine dining as a performance
Eeshaan Kashyap’s showcase will be on at The Stands at Wankhede Stadium from March 5-9
Eeshaan Kashyap is in the thick of orchestrating a world that swallows you whole. Inside a cavernous space in Delhi’s Chattarpur farmlands, he is conjuring a Victorian-era train station for fashion label Cord’s 10-year anniversary celebration—where the guests are puppets in a grand, immersive spectacle. They arrive clutching station cards, stepping into a fever dream of theatrical opulence in which food appears to float, hover, and whirl around them like an illusionist’s trick. As he fine-tunes this moving masterpiece, the New Delhi-based multidisciplinary artist, chef, and restless creator looks ahead, sharing, “After this, I have to pack up 4,000 pieces into a 32-foot-high trunk for Bombay!”
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A terracotta cabbage vase
After two celebrated shows in the city over the past few years, Kashyap will be returning this week to The Stands in Wankhede Stadium with a showcase titled, PLAY, between March 5 and 9. “I’ve had a lot of ideas incubating for a while now, and this time you’ll see different pieces I’ve experimented with, using techniques I thought might not be possible. But the narrative, of course, is all around the table,” he points out—a nod to being a trained chef and sought-after food and design consultant. His surrealist designs have transformed prominent restaurants and bars such as PCO, PDA, À Ta Maison, SAZ, Ping’s Café Orient and Jamun, along with weddings and curated events across the country.
While smaller objects retail in Mumbai at Le Mill, “mostly for gifting or as an introduction to what we do”, Kashyap describes this edit as a continuation of the storytelling from his last show, Artist Proof. This time, however, he pushes the boundaries further, introducing pieces we’ll be seeing for the first time, such as chairs and lights, “with a very bold and brave visual vocabulary, where each one unapologetically stands out with a composition of colours.”
Golden scallop spoon a lapis lazuli plate and tumbler in blue soda stone
Spread across three sections to break the show into a story of immersive experiences, the first unfolds as a dreamscape of elements highlighting what Kashyap calls table jewellery. From a bandhani totem to a table carved out of solid crystal, a confetti of intricately crafted pieces and objets d’art cascade across the space, bringing together materials from a delicate twig to a prized ruby. “This brass totem was designed to look like the metal is visually flowing out, while these napkins bear kalamkari printing, and this entire tablecloth is made from rice paper with shibori dyeing on it,” he points out.
The next section is “tonal, tactile, and terrific”, a vibrant cacophony of fluid shapes and morphed objects that come together in a design symphony. Here, Kashyap plays with the diversity of daily life through tableware. Structured solid materials balance and collide playfully with raw, organic natural forms to build objects that invite interaction. “I also wanted to explore the fragility of beauty and its impermanence, and used ice as a material to depict this. You’ll find ice sculptures as candle stands here, slowly melting to transform the space as they disappear—a poignant reminder of how beauty exists in moments,” he says.
A red and black vase collection form part of the exhibition
Dedicated to nostalgia, the last movement in the showcase leans to the past and builds on Kashyap’s earlier iconic designs, such as the squared-based Modern Matka. “And there’s also a collection of my favourite pieces and plates. But nothing is matchy-matchy here—I want everyone to play around with what’s on display and create their own compositions,” he adds.
While a “tightly curated website” with objects for the everyday is in the works, for now, Kashyap could use a well-earned breather. “This feels more like I’m planning a wedding— I just had a long meeting about the fragrance we want wafting through the show…,” he quips, hurriedly rushing to his phone.
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