Her Kitchen

“Her Kitchen”, a floor-standing interactive installation inspired by home kitchens and women’s authentic life experiences, aims to convey the plight and pain of traditional women, thus stimulating the public’s deep reflection on gender roles.

The kitchen is traditionally an area exclusive to women, where traditional women spend most of their time. Considering such an inseparable relationship, the author has interviewed hundreds of Chinese women, and selected the most representative stories of six women from different generations as the core of the project.

The interactive installation consists of 5 ceramic pieces, 6 sets of fabric stories, 1 sculpture, 1 table and 1 set of touch sound device. It allows individuals to listen to the stories of these women by interacting with the corresponding food containers through touching the sound devices (black dinnerware) nearby. Each container contains a zine, which is designed with the elements of a dish that holds profound emotional significance in each woman’s life.

Take one of these women for example, she, who gave birth to a baby girl (under China’s son preference in the old days, if women cannot give birth to sons for their families, they will be regarded as worthless), was hardly visited during the period of the month, and often bought bread and pickles alone for a full stomach. Her story is presented through a ceramic woman with her stomach hollowed out, where the zine features the elements of pickles, highlighting the woman’s loneliness and resilience.

Additionally, all zines are shaped like a rag, not only symbolizing the endless labor and effort of women in kitchens, but also suggesting that a rag can erase a stain in a kitchen, but it cannot erase what happened to a woman.