‘I’ve never cooked before’
Performance, 2019 Sep. – 2021
Den Bosch, Ede-Wageningen, Den Haag, Breda, Rotterdam
Dishes are abstract paintings that reflect our existence; dishes are installations we consume neglectfully every day. I had never cooked before I came to the Netherlands. I cooked without following recipes, only by adjusting seasonings, cutting, mixing, and looking at the pictures from the supermarkets. I rarely observed how my friends cook. If the dishes are a language, ingredients are letters; the way of cooking is the pronunciation. What kind of language do I invent in a new social context?
















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.