Work THE KITCHEN

THE KITCHEN

2013 | video documentation of performance, food installation Produced in
collaboration with Jelena Fužinato, “The Kitchen” is a 360 minute performance and
installation exploring notions of retraditionalisation and emancipation in a feminist
context. Two female performers roleplay words and ideas drawing from text and art
theory from the second and third wave, while also preparing food and reading
recipes aloud from cookbooks written in the same period. The outcome of these
confused and juxtaposed perspectives on womanhood and femininity generate a
chaotic and somewhat absurd situation that is hyper-accentuated by the two
concurrent activities—of critical feminist theory alongside a domestic activity
gendered conventionally female. The two authors and performers interpret the
problems of the social and political position of women posited by these texts. They
discuss the labour market as foundational to socialization, and the conditions and
space of possible action while roasting a chicken, baking a cake or flattening dough.
Screened alongside a food installation in the gallery space where visitors could help
themselves, distinctions between recipes and feminist texts become muddled and
unclear.“The Kitchen” deals with the point of transition from the post-war woman as
revolutionised hero mother to the retraditionalised, yet sexualised housewife of
contemporary post-Communist culture in the Balkans. By confronting these two
opposing impulses—between retraditionalisation and emancipation—a confused
situation emerges. The disoriented interactions and conditions of the two women
becomes an allegory for the contradictory perception of “womanhood” by society at
large.