ROCKER OF IDEAS

A DILLIGENT AND PRETTY COOK IS MOST PRAISEWORTHY

2017

June-October 2017
Temporary exhibition
Open storage, Kino Partizan

A DILLIGENT AND PRETTY COOK IS MOST PRAISEWORTHY

The kitchen is a space that reflects many social aspects of the society in its micro or macro appearances. With its culinary delights and radial balance positions of the participants of the space sitting around the table within which the informal hyperboles reflect the relationships in communities. In the expression of visual art, close relation is formed as a reflection of social relations within selected communities. The latter could provide answers, questions, doubts, tips and facts on the assessment of movements or standstill positions in different forms of community.

In terms of content and expressive, the project A COOK THAT IS DILLIGENT AND PRETTY IS MOST PRAISEWORTHY is based on the underlying terms – conceptual elements that are related to the kitchen as well as the visual art:
• SPACE – kitchen and visual arts are a reflection of a certain material and abstract space. Material space defines the physical layout of the exhibited material and reflects its characteristics, restrictions and advantages. The exhibited material reflects the abstract, a wider space of social, cultural and economic context. The dynamics of movement and association of different spaces is present in the kitchen (influence of different cuisines, kitchenware, people etc.) and visual art (exhibiting worldwide in different exhibition grounds, exhibition events are influencing one another etc.).
• ART VALUE - the visual elements (e.g. color, line, texture, shape) of the exhibited material are evaluated and analyzed. The terms are also used in food and are included as elementary building blocks of visual perception.
- LIFESTYLE - Kitchen/food and visual arts are part of building a lifestyle. Cafés are an integral part of museum and gallery spaces.

In the history of kitchens in Slovenia, people used paper or textile embroidered wall cloths over the stove. They were highly pictorial and narrative, and they highlighted a certain claim related to cooking and the social contexts of domestic life. They also established a certain sociological gender position in the context of cooking and the kitchen. Historical images of wall cloths are used as an inspirational visual starting point. The motifs of human images of four women and a man drawn on the wall cloths are taken out of the original whole and the social context of their creation, and in an updated version are set as spatial layouts in a realistic human size ratio. By moving around the space, visitors experience the human figures from different angles and, due to the different perspectives of looking at them and the deconstruction of the basic body image, they form new body structures that respond to the exhibition space. In addition to the deconstructed body forms with different elements of artistic interventions, inscriptions hang around the space, which are transformed texts made of embroidered wall cloths. The texts are humorous, playful and educational. (Blessed is the wife who has a good husband; There is nothing better in the world than a home standing on happiness; Don't throw water at me, clean the dishes! etc.). The inscriptions define the different identities assumed by women in the context of the social consensus in the cooking process and the relation to the kitchen space. The exhibition is accompanied by an original soundtrack.

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