Last Suppers
I made a very big mistake during my studies in fine art – I did not make enough
of feminist art. I cried last semester so many times because my body, my mind,
anything that I consider mine, does not know how to start, even in adopted
masculinity, to recall feminine wisdom. I think like a man, I work like a man,
I even create art like a man, while there was an overproduction of anything of
men. You are welcome to laugh. Aesthetics of men are extraordinary, and
aesthetics of women are compared to mass production – not sacred because
it claims massive society problems to be watched at instead of the celebration
of self. My last project in the art academy Minerva is a formation of questions
around religious roots and hunger. Why were women wanted to be placed in
the fruit, as a side dish, gatherers' role, instead of seeing them as partners of
the main providers of food for families? The country I am from has a very lively
old tradition of making twelve dishes on Christmas Eve. The twelve
dishes were usually mastered by grandmothers, mothers, sisters, aunts,
daughters, granddaughters, even neighbours, and anyone else to pass the
taste and recipes for further generations. Now families are ordering twelve
kinds of sushi at the sushi restaurants in Lithuania. No judgement here – it
is quite a job to master twelve dishes. While studying fine art, I was drawn
into and working in the food industry, where the chef profession is recognised
and trusted to be masculine. While creating a menu for the graduation show
of twelve dishes as a ceremony of diversity, summer edition, I am comparing
old tradition with competitiveness in professionalism, adding the hunger
problem as a decentralisation point in the cooking project. There was a saying
in a poverty-affected country: “If there is only bread left on the table, there is
no hunger”. Is it?
