Recalling Forgotten Tastes

Recalling Forgotten Tastes is a recollection of traditional ecological knowledge on plants through visual arts, more specifically surrounding the livelihood of Orang Asli here in Malaysia, gathering stories of foraged eats from our depleting forests. It seeks beyond the confined rooms of cultivated crops that are available today and restriction of lands for mono culture farming. The project attempts to maintain the revitalization of traditional ecological knowledge about wild and semi-domesticated plants as strong and multi-generational through acquiring foraging skills particularly in forested mountains, which can potentially establish new criteria for sustainable management of wild edible species alongside cultivated lands.

With the brief notion of collecting history of plants, the findings from the interviews with particular groups of Orang Asli, documentation of rare plants and writings would be translated into a series of guides with different volumes or informative books surrounding the topics of tastes, foraged eats and basic survival skills. In the accounts of modernization and mass deforestation, it has become more imperative than ever to commit ourselves in recording the diversity of plants that are often tended by the native people, which would possibly lead to comprehensive studies and conservation of rare and endangered plant species