It’s Your Fault! Feminist Art, Foodwork and the Postsocialist Kitchen

This essay addresses the realities, tensions and contradictions of food culture
in postsocialist states. The main discussion is on the Latvian art scene,
particularly the work of artists Aija Jurjāne (1944–2015) and Rasa Jansone (b.
1973). Aija Jurjāne was a teacher in an art school and her paintings, as well as
countless drawings, mostly reflected her private domestic space and family life,
including the kitchen – simultaneously an asylum, confinement, and an artist’s
studio. The second artist is Rasa Jansone. In her collages and installations, she
weaves the stories of her mother and grandmother with the postsocialist food
politics and the feminized labour of care work. Of special interest is her
installation Diet (2017), which consisted of more than 400 items of jarred food
(pickles and jams) – an experiment to perform the foodwork that was part of
her grandmother’s annual routine. By attending to the representation of the
kitchen both as a physical and symbolic space, the essay explores how the
construction of postsocialist femininity is intertwined with food practices,
shaping the position of women artists.