A six-foot bread sculpture made with expertise from Kyani and Company, Bombay’s well-known Irani restaurant and bakery found its way to the students section of the Kochi-Muziris Biennale (KMB) 2016 in Fort Cochin, Kerala. Ayushi Shriramwar, the sculptor, revealed to Parsiana on March 20, 2017 that she was emboldened to ask the Kyani management for an okay to go ahead with the collaboration on account of "the sketch (of well known artist M. F. Hussain) hanging on their wall.” Hearing that Hussain was a regular customer at the eatery, "I knew… this was a place which appreciates art,” she comments. Shriramwar has a specialization in ceramics from the J. J. School of Art.
"I always wanted to work with bread, and started experimenting with it in a scientific way… There was no place better than Kyani’s to do this,” she had told the Mid-Day in November 2016, as preparations for the unusual sculpture were under way.
The artist divided the sculpture "as tall as the mirrored pillars” in the restaurant into six segments, with each segment baked individually for eight hours, "to make them kadak (firm)… any more and they… take on the consistency of a khari (biscuit)” and therefore difficult to work on further. The method involved making a plaster of Paris mold, putting it in the oven to bake, with dough filled inside, and then chiseling away the mold when done.
"My sculpture has come to slowly disintegrate now as almost three months (have) passed... it has taken beautiful shades of green, white and black due to the mold growth,” Shriramwar discloses. The students’ Biennale is run by the Kochi Biennale Foundation, in collaboration with the Foundation for Indian Contemporary Art (FICA) and the Foundation for Indian Art and Education (FIAE).