signs and symbols

June 18 - July 1, 2020

Opening Online: Thursday, June 18, 6:00pm
Closing: Wednesday, July 1, 6:00pm

signs and symbols is pleased to present What Happens In The Kitchen?, a video exhibition by Rachel Libeskind as part of the gallery’s series of online-only solo presentations of video works.

What Happens In The Kitchen? is Libeskind’s recent video work, which reconstructs borrowed fragments of texts with collaged remnants of footage individually shot and gifted to her by participants who were instructed by the artist to record themselves in the kitchen during the global lockdown.

Libeskind writes:

Fragments of thoughts, fragments of ideas: What happens in the kitchen? What happens in the kitchen when you are alone? Do you dream while you cut and chop and wash and dry and press and flatten and fluff? Do you think about the congruities of mixing and separating and the order of operations in life and time as well as in recipe and remembrance? Does your cooking resemble you? Does it resemble your mother? Do you hate to cook? Do you hate to eat? Does your body know the knife better than its own tongue? Do you watch the oil burn and think about the evaporation of our resources? Do you watch the egg cook and your arms begin to ache? Do you think about revolt as you peel rhubarb? Does the blender remind you of your dreams? What happens in the kitchen? What happens when you are alone?

Special Thanks to (in alphabetical order) -

Zoe Albert, Akua Murray-Adoboe, Fabiola Alondra, Allison Brainard, Lolita Cros, Maylan Dong, Pola Esther, Anna Furney, Erin Goldberger, Jamie Lynn Harris, Kara Hollis, Lola Kirke, Yolanda Rother, Isabelle Schipper, Rose Schlossberg, Sasha Spielberg, Isabella Toledo, Coco Winston

With fragmented texts taken from -

Chantal Ackerman, Louise Bourgeois, Gwendolyn Brooks, Anne Carson, Helene Cisoux, Emily Dickinson, Donna Haraway, Zora Neale Hurston, bell hooks, Rachel Libeskind, Audre Lorde, Laura Mulvey, Sylvia Plath, Claudia Rankine, Gayatri Spivak, Gertrude Stein, Simone Weil, Agnes Varda, Phyllis Wheatley, Rahel Vornagen

*Please note that Libeskind's video will be viewable online from Thursday, June 18 at 6:00pm until Wednesday, July 1 at 6:00pm. Following the end of the exhibition, the video will only be accessible via private link and password. We trust that given our current circumstances, everyone will act in good faith and good will, understanding that these are primary artworks by our artists that are collected and which would otherwise be password protected.

rachel libeskind (b. 1989, Milan) is a Brooklyn-based artist, born in Milan and raised in Berlin, Germany. She holds a B.A. with honors from Harvard University. Libeskind has shown her work in exhibitions in Paris, London, Milan, Rome, Warsaw, Vilnius, Miami and New York among other cities internationally. She is a multi-disciplinary artist, often merging her installations and performances with her studio practice. Libeskind’s work is characterized by a unique combination of historicist appropriation and improvisational arranging. Her work deals with issues of identity, the transmutations of past histories and the collection and curation of images and objects.