Peperduur: as expensive as black pepper

"What if black pepper continued to be used as currency? Peperduur explores the colonial past and postcolonial capitalist realities of the international black pepper trade by critically fabulating alternative histories that run tangentially to documented history.

An installation of designed artefacts and historical excerpts relates the impacts of this ubiquitous spice on farmers and consumers in India and the Netherlands. Reflecting on the social and economic relationship with black pepper over the centuries reveals the political factors that shape how everyday food commodities come to be taken for granted. How inevitable is today’s socio-economic state of labour-intensive agro-commodities then really?"