Kitchen-Studio

Overview

Kitchen-Studio is the next Black Box Projects exhibition at MAY SPACE. Curated by Megan Fizell and featuring artists Nina Ross, Miku Sato, Hana Hoogedeure and Luke O'Donnell, Kawita Vatanajyankur, Hanne Nielsen and Birgit Johnsen, and Ana Prvački, the show turns the domestic kitchen into a performance space.

Exploring themes such as the divide between public and private, female labour, collaboration, language, the body, and physical beauty, each artist takes inspiration from the everyday domestic gesture of preparing food. Underneath it all is the echo of Judith Butler's argument for gender as a cultural construction established through a 'stylized repetition of acts' — in this case, the repeated domestic gestures enacted day after day by women in their kitchens. What is the relationship between the kitchen, food preparation and the solidification of gender norms? And if an artist takes a space that is normally private and brings it into the realm of public performance? What happens then?

Video artist Kawita Vatanajyankur in particularly is sure to capture your attention — her vibrantly hued staged performances explore the female body, its connection to domesticity, and most of all its capacity for strength and endurance.

Image: Kawita Vatanajyankur, The Ice Shaver (2013).