Gastro-Vision: Back in the Kitchen

Martha Rosler, Semiotics of the Kitchen, 1975. 6:09 min, b&w, sound.

Julia Child photographed in 1970 on the set of her television show.

The Museum of Modern Art could not have picked a better moment to mount Counter Space: Design and the Modern Kitchen, an exhibition about the changing aesthetics and politics of this domestic space. The kitchen, once considered woman’s domain and the bane of her existence, is still, after all these waves of feminism, a hotbed for contention. This year, the blogosphere has been abuzz with talk of sexism in the culinary arts; a rising “feminist food revolution” in the United States; and heated debate about whether second-wave American feminism ruined the family meal by “denigrating foodwork” and encouraging women to leave the kitchen. Counter Space has clear feminist leanings, but rather than regurgitate the usual rhetoric or play up the trope of the kitchen as domestic prison, the curators have elegantly balanced metaphorical apron strings with objects of unbridled creativity.

Counter Space is drawn entirely from the museum’s collection, and organized in conjunction with their newest publication Modern Women: Women Artists at The Museum of Modern Art. The show recognizes women’s contributions to the kitchen as domestic workers, as well as disciplined artists, architects and designers. The icing on the cake, so to speak, is the diverse selection of works by women and men, contemporary and historical. In Martha Rosler’s iconic video Semiotics of the Kitchen (1975), an “anti-Julia Child” names and demonstrates the tools of her oppression. 

Continue reading >>