The Art of What We Throw Away

"When I first came across Rhea Gupte's striking images of frozen compost, I couldn't help but feel a sense of familiarity. As someone who habitually tosses future broth-making scraps into the freezer, a cube of frozen kitchen remnants is something I've grown accustomed to creating. But Gupte's brilliant instinct to document this practice in her photographic art series, , opens a broader conversation, one about creating something out of nothing and about finding beauty in the mundane."

"Gupte began the COMPOST series at home in Goa, amid the pandemic. Photographing portraits of her household's frozen waste not only made her more mindful of consumption, but it also offered a way to produce artwork from what already existed in her freezer without extracting new resources or generating additional waste. In doing so, she asks the art world an essential question: can what we so easily dismiss as waste be worthy to hold space on a wall, as art?"

"Most recently, the series was on view in London at BLEUR Gallery. Since many of the COMPOST images are rooted in ingredients commonly found in Indian kitchens, Gupte insisted on collaborating with a South Asian chef. The result was a partnership with Bengali chef and seasoned supper-club host Sohini Banerjee of Smoke and Lime. A community experience unfolded around tamarind, chili and cumin-spiced confit potatoes, winter pea bhorta, and flaky puff pastry."

Rhea Gupte photographed layered blocks of frozen household food waste to create the COMPOST series, turning accumulated kitchen remnants into visual records of daily life. She began the series at home in Goa during the pandemic, using portraits of frozen waste to increase mindfulness of consumption and to produce art without extracting new resources or generating additional waste. The series questions whether discarded food can be worthy of display as art. The work was shown at BLEUR Gallery in London alongside a zero-waste supper club in collaboration with Bengali chef Sohini Banerjee. The exhibition emphasized circularity, community learning, and shared meals.

Read at Design Milk