I’ve never cooked before
Performance, 2019 Sep. – 2021
Den Bosch, Ede-Wageningen, Den Haag, Breda, Rotterdam
Dishes are installations we consume neglectfully every day; the fundamental traces look like abstract paintings that reflect our existence. I had never cooked before I came to the Netherlands. I started to cook without following recipes, only by adjusting seasonings, cutting, and mixing. I rarely observed friends’ cuisines. If the dishes are a language, ingredients are letters; the way of cooking is the pronunciation. What kind of language do I speak here?
I selected a few dishes from different periods. It seems to record how I learned to “speak.”
We often corrected, narrowed, or expanded the term kids invented till they succeeded in giving words the same range of meaning as we do. Somehow, I feel it happened to my cooking experience too.