In a world breaking apart, how does food help us to heal as society?
Contents:
– Abstract
– Food as nurture and food as art.
– The artist, their food and the Iraq war.
– Food as Cultural Identity, Reversal of power and weapons of mass deliciousness.
– Conclusion – – Footnotes
– Bibliography
– Images References
Abstract
This Essay will explore the use of food in contemporary Art in the form of relational aesthetics.
It will investigate food: food as a metaphor, food as a tool to raise conversation, food as a
performance medium and food as an act of cultural identity. This essay will take as a base the
work of Michael Rakowitz, Enemy Kitchen and enquiring into cultural identity and history of
place shown through symbolism served in the artist’s Enemy Kitchen. It will also explore
how power structures are challenged amid the preparation and consumption of these feasts
and the social outreach through the medium of performance and relational aesthetics. It will
study food and the sharing of it as a healing process and as a political tool.
Food as nurture and food as art.
Food and nourishment is very intrinsic for living beings, that is the reason why we take it for
granted, including its definition. Human nutrition is studied for a wide range of different
fields such as: chemistry, molecular biology, psychology and anthropology, among others.
This study will consider the anthropology of food including the embedded economic and
political science disciplines.(*1) Rakowitz plays with these notions and uses them in various
artworks including Enemy Kitchen.
However, food is not just a need for the human being. It is also one of the greatest pleasures
and also a widely used medium in art. In his interview with Christine Gaigg artist Peter
Kubelka expresses his view of cooking as the oldest form of art, comparing the preparation of
a dish with the preparation of a painting or a poem.(*2) When eating we are not just nourishing
our body but also decrypting with the mouth the messages of that recipe and Kubelka
identifies food as a vehicle for communication.(*3) Food is also vehicle for communication
within families creating a platform where we share and spend time together. This may be the
reason why food has been a source of art inspiration in many different cultures since the
beginning of times as it is now for Rakowitz.
Arts relationship with food is not something new. We find examples in ancient Greek and
Roman mosaics and paintings representing banquets and bacchanals,(*4)
in Egypt’s pyramids walls where food was painted (*5)
or during the Renaissance, the biblical story The Last Supper.
In 1932 Filippo Tommaso Marinetti published The Futurist Cookbook. Later, in a more
sculptural context and implementing history of product and place is Kara Walker’s Sugar
Baby.(*6) Also Rirkrit Tiravanija’s conviviality happenings, for example Untitled (Free) in 1992
for 303 Gallery in New York.(*7) Rakowitz was able to build on this tradition of using food as a
medium of art.
Although the celebration of banquets is widely known, very little is written about them as
performative or theatrical events when in fact these practices have many things in common
including the ephemerality. In other words, their history only arrives to us by scripts and
memories, so now we can only reconstruct them with our imaginations.(*8) Barbara
Kirshenblatt-Gimblett appoints three spaces where performance and food merge together.(*9)
First of all, “to perform is to do”. This phase is the manufacture of food, the preparation and
service of it. It is about making, the technical preparations and the utensils. This is the
prominent sense in which we can speak of performative kitchen. Secondly: “to perform is to
behave” Erving Goffman refers to this as the everyday life performance.(*10) It is in this stage
where we find rituals, customs or laws which can be imposed by religion, social etiquette or
others reasons. The performative act is to behave according to this norms and protocols.
Third and last: “to perform is to show”. During this period participants become judges of
what is presented, moving towards the spectacle and the theatrical aesthetics where sensorial sensations come together.(*11) Rakowitz also orchestrate these three phases during his participatory feeding events like Enemy Kitchen.
However, it is not until Marinetti’s Futurist Cookbook was published that feasts where
considered artworks. This book contains a group of jokes, experiments and games addressed
to satirise the almost sacred food practices of the ‘bourgeois’.(*12) The practicality of this
“cookbook” is completely performative and even the intensity of the writing is very
performative. This performance finishes with the reaction of the public, for example: a march
in Naples in protest to Marinetti’s manifesto “against pasta”.(*13) After Marinetti’s book, many
artworks have used food as a performative medium. For instance, during the exhibition (and
consequent catalogue) “Feast, Radical hospitality in contemporary art” by Smart Museum of
Art in Chicago an entire space was dedicated to performative feasts, including Rakowitz’s
Enemy Kitchen (Food truck).(*14)
The artist, their food and the Iraq war.
Rakowitz is an American-Iraqi artist, born in 1973, in New York. He is currently living and
working in Chicago (United States) not just as artist practitioner but also as Professor of Art
Theory and Practice at Northwestern University. His work is represented by Rhorna Hoffman
Gallery (Chicago), Jane Lombard Gallery (New York) and Barbara Wien Galerie (Berlin).(*15)
Rakowitz is best known for his politically charged sculptures and installations. As a former
student of Krysztof Wodiczko he expands the term ‘Interrogative Design’, (*16) which empowers the general population with their critical voice. Richard Noble has described Rakowitz as “a
therapeutic utopian” who creates a more conceivable, concrete and open ended methodology
to link art and political change.(*17) To summarise, Rakowitz’s art serves to raise public
debate.(*18)
The piece on which this essay is going to focus is his ongoing project Enemy Kitchen
(Matbakh al-‘adu) (2003-ongoing), this is a performative social sculpture exploring
connections between hostility and hospitality through the preparation and sharing of
Baghdadi food . Enemy Kitchen is diasporic piece made in collaboration with his Iraqi-Jewish
mum (Yvonne Rakowitz)(*19) who raised him in her own Iraqi customs and culture speaking
Arabic in the kitchen while cooking. The collaboration with his mother is not the only family
related layer in this project, Rakowitz also makes through symbolism a tribute to his
grandfather’s old shop, Davisons & Co.. The import and export shop was amidst the most
successful of the Middle East but in 1946 Nissim Isaac David (Rakowitz’s grandfather) and
his family were exiled from Iraq to New York where Rakowitz’s family found their new
home and where they reopened Davisons & Co. business until it closed in 1960s.(*20) These are
some of the reasons why this piece finds its very beginnings in their own home and once
again brings their family together through nourishment. It is also his mother who made
Rakowitz notice that there are no Iraqi restaurants in New York. Many of them are operating
as “Mediterranean cuisine”. There is not even a Mediterranean coast in Iraq, but owners are
afraid for their businesses to be related with war culture. Despite this, when USA was moving towards wars against Afghanistan and Iraq, Rakowitz observed crowds of people queuing
outside restaurants to take Afghan food as their demonstration against war. They were taking
the food of the enemy, which was a beautiful act or a ‘strange communion’.(*21) Enemy Kitchen
makes, through food, an active disagreement to war(*22) and aims to heal some of the wounds
created by it using relational aesthetics.
The catalyst for Rakowitz’s work was the 2003 USA invasion of Iraq after a 48 hours
ultimatum to leave Iraq from USA president George Bush to Saddam Hussein. Since then
much has happened in Iraq but American troops remain in the country. In 2010 USA
president Barack Obama announced the end of American combat mission in Iraq. Troops will
remain there supporting Iraqi troops against terrorist attacks and to protect American
civilians. During 2020, president of USA Donald Trump made an announcement: “…I am
continuing for 1 year the national emergency with respect to the stabilization of Iraq declared
in Executive Order 13303.”*(23) In other words, American troops will remain in Iraq for at least
one more year.
Enemy Kitchen takes distinct formats and is designed to be delivered to a wide different
range of audiences. It reached the public for first time in 2003 in form of workshops, for
middle and high schools. Here, Rakowitz will teach small groups of people his Baghdadi
family recipes and culinary heritage. During this workshops dialog is open to explore the side
effects of the Iraq conflict.(*24) It aims to open different forms to discuss Iraq using food and
cooking as medium of cultural identity, nourishment. It intends to bring Iraqi culture and knowledge to American population using his maternal and paternal cultural heritage and
therefore a different type of dialog than offered by the news, creating the possibility of Iraqi
cultural visibility. During 2012 Enemy Kitchen evolved into a mobile sculpture, Enemy
Kitchen (Food truck). This food truck was a central commission for the previously mentioned
exhibition and catalogue FEAST: Radical Hospitality in Contemporary Art and will provide a
central hub of participation during the project.
Food as Cultural Identity, Reversal of power and weapons of mass deliciousness.(*25)
Food helps societies to build their own cultural identities. However, what, when and how we
eat varies from places, times and cultures. Eating is both: an individual and a group activity.
Each person eats as an individual, with their own hands, mouth, tongue, stomach… But is an
activity commonly made in groups. Several people is needed to grow and work the food until
it arrives to our mouths. Apart from these facts, humans tend to get nourishment and enjoy
food in groups. All of this, together with previously mentioned Kubelka arguments, makes
food and eating a collective activity. Tastes, smells and textures during meals often evoke
strong feelings, memories and emotions through our individual palates but these sensations
are happening during collective experiences. It helps us to remember our ancestors, recreate
other times as society. When this happens, food becomes a legacy, inheritance. It becomes
intangible patrimony. It becomes our culture, who we are.(*26)
Enemy Kitchen explores this cultural legacy. Iraqi cultural identity is translated for the
audience using food as a medium to create a platform through cooking Iraqi food together,
provoking dialogue as Art within the population of Chicago. In this platform the individual
and the collective lines are vanish and dialogue is raised by the dissemination of this
disconcerting situation created by the artist.(*27) For example dialog can be raised by questions
during the cooking process or by analysing similarities about the processes, for example
discussing dumpling’s shaping techniques. During Enemy Kitchen workshops students were
able to trace parallels between Iraq war and their own lives making comparisons with bullies.(*28) Iraqi food becomes a social equalizer.(*29) Once audience experience Enemy Kitchen’s
food, the Iraqi culture becomes part of them, being inside the participant’s bodies. The
mobile Sculpture and workshops make a full experience for the participants making all the
senses to be alert and in two places at the same time (USA and Iraq). To achieve this
experience, Rakowitz makes use of symbolism in every detail of the performative piece and
this will be explored in continuation. Some examples are: The logo/flag, the dishes where
food is served, the smells or even who the chefs or sous-chefs are. Therefore, this piece of art
becomes a piece of production before a place of display. The display is only completed when
the audience has already taken part.(*30)
A key point on Enemy Kitchen (Food truck) is who cooks and serves the food. This project
includes chefs Milad and Maikl Shaer. They were owners of a Milo’s Pitta Place, a Chicago
restaurant serving Iraqi food with the label of ‘middle east’ cuisine. As sous-chefs, Rakowitz
employed USA war veterans from Iraq war (Chicago has a large number of war veterans).
This fact becomes important for the project in different ways. First, it probably brings the
first taste of Iraqi cuisine to these soldiers, because soldiers normally eat in their
commissaries on their bases in Iraq from multinational fast-food chains. For this reason is
difficult that they have tasted Iraqi food before. Second, it makes a reversal of power when
thinking on American occupation and invasion. Now, the Americans are taking orders from
the Iraqis, and learning from them.(*31) This becomes a way of creating social equilibrium. This
equalization of society is not represented just in the kitchen, but also affects the customers.
Customers have in front of them the cultural representation of the two sides of the same
conflict. They can raise questions or conversations and receive different answers or feelings.
It is in these settings when conversations can happen, casually. The conversation can happen
between the chefs and sous-chefs while preparing and sculpting the edible objects. Or, it may
happen while consuming the food.(*32) That is why it is important that customers know where
the food is from, but also which hands are making and serving it. Enemy Kitchen (Food
truck) was successful at this, raising diversity of reactions. It provoked warm discussions and
verbal attacks from inside and outside the kitchen. It also raised questions like: ‘What does it
mean to eat the food of the enemy? Or enjoy it?’ ‘who is the enemy? Does the enemy
exist?’ (*33) “How could this hospitality be fruit of such hostility?”(*34) This is the major
excitement, the platform for communication, through the pleasure of food. Where the
communication happens from person to person and not necessarily with the intervention of
the public agora. They are private conversations where true doubts, feelings and authentic
commotions about war can be shared. It allows participants to lose some fears and to create
resistance through cooking,(*35) for example removing somehow the pain caused by the schools
ban of talking about war.
Rakowitz’s Enemy Kitchen (Food Truck) is fully charged with symbolisms. In the first
instance, the truck was painted in the same green that Davisons & Co. used for their shop.(*36)
During his piece Return (2004-ongoing) Rakowitz explores the family history related to this
shop by symbolically reopening the shop as a free drop box. When Iraq shipping and trade
infrastructure collapsed on account of the war in 2005 Rakowitz’s Davisons & Co. evolved to a fully formed packaging and delivery service and include a free service for Iraqi diasporic
community and interested participants to send free of charge goods or items to Iraqi
recipients. Therefore, the colour symbolises the intergenerational status of the piece(*37) which
together with the collaboration of Rakowitz’s mother makes of this a biographical piece,
allowing Rakowitz to reconstruct his own cultural heritage and family history, as he was born
in USA. The next metaphor or symbolism, is the flag used to serve the first meals at the
truck. This is a combination of Chicago’s and Iraqi’s flags. The flag is formed by Chicago’s
flag design, changing the colour of the stars from red to green and the bars from blue to red
and black. In other words, it replace the colours of Chicago’s flag for the colours of Iraq’s
flag. It becomes a symbol of emerging cultures of Chicago, new home for a big community
of Iraqi refugees.(*38) The Dishes are another very strong symbol. The paper plates where food
is served have the same design than Saddam Hussein’s porcelain (See figure 1). Eating a
delicious dish is Hussein’s porcelain cause a personal conflict. During USA invasion
campaign the porcelain was looted, together with other household utensils as silverware.
They were symbols of government’s power. Since the looting, ordinary people have been
using them in daily basis in their households, dispersing, somehow, the power.(*39) When the
meal is finished Iraqi’s host pour some drops of rose water on guest’s heads. Rakowitz uses
this welcoming tradition in the Food Truck, so visitors can smell it on their way home and
remember a comforting evening.(*40) It is noticeable that artist Alicia Rios uses Orange Blossom
Water during her meals also as a remembrance of the Spanish tradition dating the sixth century. In contrast, in Spain it is poured in the hands when entering the host’s home or
before drinking tea.(*41) Smells are stored in the “anterior olfactory nucleus” part of the brain.
Which has direct connection with the hippocampus. This allow the human brain to give a
sense of when, where, and what, creating memories, becoming part of the meal inheritance
mentioned previously.(*42)
Surprisingly, there was one more and non-intentional layer added to the project. After the
exhibition at Feast, the intention was to create a sustainable kitchen that will keep running on
Chicago’s streets. They intended to create a fully working business. To do this, Rakowitz and
the brothers Shaer had to go through the tough bureaucracy involved to have an active food
truck in Chicago. This process was similar to the paperwork any immigrant does to seek
official status and recognition when arriving to a new country.(*43) Enemy Kitchen (Food truck)
got prepared to circulate around the streets of Chicago, allowing different communities and
suburbs from Chicago to experience Iraqi cuisine and get involved in the work, merging
different topographies and demographics of the city.(*44) Rakowitz’s helper Stephany appointed
to him the similarity between this truck and the Iraqi trucks mentioned by former United
States Secretary of State Colin Powell. According to Powell, these tracks were running
around Iraq fabricating weapons of biological mass destructions, such as anthrax or
botulinum.(*45) But here, at Enemy Kitchen (food truck), there will only be weapons of mass
deliciousness, that is, only delicious food to share and nothing to be afraid of.(*46) This
relationship added even one more layer to the project, turning around all the meanings.
Conclusion
As per Guy Debord, participation in art is important because it heals a society broken apart
by the instruments of capitalism.(*47) Rakowitz’s piece uses performative techniques from the
last decade. The tendency during this period is to use ‘a collective body of a social group’(*48)
and no longer the individual body of the artist. His work brings together the art of
performance and the art of cooking. It includes the three phases where performance and food
merge together: to do, to behave and to show.
Rakowitz’s work finds a resistance through cooking, preparing Iraqi recipes that are many
generations old. He also makes clear the importance of communication in society. He raises a
platform where dialog is promoted from individuals to individuals. It brings together different
spectres of society. Questions and thoughts can be presented and discussed in a pleasurable
environment while nourishing the bodies with delicious foods, using as a trigger for dialogue
the most primary of our instincts, feeding us. Rakowitz uses food as a metaphor as a healing
instrument for a world that’s breaking apart. It encourages us to take care of each other
because, ‘beauty is care and cooking is care’.(*49) His work shows what is broken in society and
tries to find ways through the promotion of dialogue to fix them. Using food as a medium,
dialogue as a piece of art.
Rakowitz’s banquets put together the antique and the modern, making them the same thing,
making them atemporal. Maybe, the cautionary of this is: “slow cooking, long relationships”.
Footnotes
1 Encyclopedia Britannica Editors, “Food” Encyclopedia Britannica, Internet Archive. [n.d].
2 Christine Gaigg. “The Edible Metaphor. An Interview with Peter Kubelka”. Performance Research: On
Cooking V4, No1, Spring 1999. Ed. Richard Gough. (Wales: Roulette, (1999)) 89.
3 Gaigg. “The Edible Metaphor. An Interview with Peter Kubelka”.89.
4 Elena Martinique. “The Fascination with Food in Art History.” Widewalls, 2016.
5 Donovan Gauvreau. “The Long History of Food in Art“ Aaron Art Prints. [n.d]. 6 Maude Bass Krueger. “A Bitesize History of Food in Art” Google Arts & Culture. [n.d]
7 “Rirkrit Tiravanija: cooking up an Art experience.”, Rebecca Stokes. Moma Inside out Blog. 2012.
8 Roselee Goldberg Performance: Live Art 1909 to the Present, (New York: Trans. Harry N. Abrams, Inc.
1979), 6
9 Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett. “Playing to the Senses: Food as a Performance Medium”. Performance
Research: On Cooking V4, No1, Spring 1999. Ed. Richard Gough. (Wales: Roulette, 1999),1
10 Kirshenblatt-Gimblett. “Playing to the Senses: Food as a Performance Medium”.1 11 Kirshenblatt-Gimblett. “Playing to the Senses: Food as a Performance Medium”.1
12 Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, et al. La Cucina Futurista/ The Futurist Cookbook. (London: Penguin Classics,
[1932] 2014), 237-38.
13 Marinetti, et al. La Cucina Futurista/ The Futurist Cookbook, 130
14 Anthony Hirschel. “Foreword” Feast: Radical Hospitality in Contemporary Art. (Chicago: Smart Museum of
Art. The University of Chicago. 2012) 8
15 Michael Rakowitz. “Information” Michael Rakowitz. [n.d].
16 Nato Thompson, et al. The Interventionists : Users’ Manual for the Creative Disruption of Everyday Life.
(Massachusetts: Mass MoCA. 2004). 33 17 Iwona Blazwick. “That’s how the light gets in. Foreword.” Michael Rakowitz. (London: Whitechapel Gallery.
2019).13
18 Rebecca Anne Proctor. “Iraqi-American artist Michael Rakowitz: the history maker”. Arab News, 26 Mar.
2020.
19 ReviewArt. “A Date with Michael Rakowitz (and His Mum)” ArtReview, 2019
20 Michael Rakowitz. “Return” Michael Rakowitz. [n.d]. 21 Brian Boucher. “ ‘It’s a Strange Communion’: Artist Michael Rakowitz on Why He Set up an Iraqi Food
Truck Outside the MCA Chicago.” Artnet News, 15 Jan. 2018.
22 Ella Shohat. “Culinary Ghosting: A Journey through a Sweet-and-Sour Iraq.” Michael Rakowitz. (London:
Whitechapel Gallery. 2019) 52
23 Congressional Research Services. “U.S. Periods of Wars and Dates of Recent Conflicts.” FAS (Federation of
American Scientists). 5 Jun. 2020. 9
24 SMART Museum of Art. “Michael Rakowitz”. Feast: Radical Hospitality in Contemporary Art. (Chicago:
Smart Museum of Art. The University of Chicago. 2012). 294 25 “Michael Rakowitz: Enemy Kitchen Chicago.”, The University of Chicago. Youtube. 2012.
26 Michael A Di Giovine. and Ronda L Brulotte. “Food and Foodways as Cultural Heritage.” Academia.edu [n.d]
27 Nicolas Bourriaud. Relational Aesthetics. Trans. Simon Pleasance et al. (Dijon : Les presses du réel [1998]
2002). 31
28 Creative Capital, “Enemy Kitchen”, Creative Capitals: projects, [n.d]
29 “Enemy Kitchen by Michael Rakowitz.”, Montalvoarts. Youtube. 5 Mar 2010. 30 Claire Bishop. Artificial Hells: Participatory Art and the politics of Spectatorship. (London: Verso. 2012) 219
31 SMART Museum of Art. “Michael Rakowitz”. Feast: Radical Hospitality in Contemporary Art. 294-298 32 SMART Museum of Art. “Michael Rakowitz”. Feast: Radical Hospitality in Contemporary Art. 303
33 Nash Hott. “Enemy Kitchen by Michael Rakowitz at MCA Chicago. Update 5. Own a Part of the Artwork:
Enemy Kitchen Flag” Kickstarter. 17 Aug 2017.
34 Aaron Hughes, “Generosity, despite”, MCAChicago, MCA Chicago, 21 Nov. 2017. Web. 14 Dec. 2020
35 “Michael Rakowitz. Enemy Kitchen.”, SITE Santa Fe. Vimeo. 2018.
36 SMART Museum of Art. “Michael Rakowitz”. Feast: Radical Hospitality in Contemporary Art. 295 37 Ella Shohat. “Culinary Ghosting: A Journey through a Sweet-and-Sour Iraq.” Michael Rakowitz. (London:
Whitechapel Gallery. 2019) 54-55
38 Nash Hott. “Enemy Kitchen by Michael Rakowitz at MCA Chicago. Update 5. Own a Part of the Artwork:
Enemy Kitchen Flag”
39 SMART Museum of Art. “Michael Rakowitz”. Feast: Radical Hospitality in Contemporary Art. 301
40 SMART Museum of Art. “Michael Rakowitz”. Feast: Radical Hospitality in Contemporary Art. 303 41 Alicia Rios. “Performance, Food & Cookery: A Temperate Menu”. Performance Research: On Cooking V4,
No1, Spring 1999. Ed. Richard Gough.(Wales: Roulette, 1999) 107
42 Christopher Belgrand. “The Neuroscience of Smell memories Linked to place and Time” Psychology today.
31 Jul. 2018.
43 SMART Museum of Art. “Michael Rakowitz”. Feast: Radical Hospitality in Contemporary Art. 294
44 SMART Museum of Art. “Michael Rakowitz”. Feast: Radical Hospitality in Contemporary Art. 298
45 Paul Richter. “Powell gives Details of Mobile Arms Labs” Chicago Tribune. 6 Feb. 2003.
46 “Michael Rakowitz: Enemy Kitchen Chicago.”, The University of Chicago. Youtube. 2012. 47 Claire Bishop. Artificial Hells: Participatory Art and the politics of Spectatorship, 11
48 Claire Bishop. Artificial Hells: Participatory Art and the politics of Spectatorship, 219
49 (Michael Rakowitz in conversation with Emily Jacir “An anti-master class on cooking dinner at the end of the
day or Toast” 30th April 2020. Dar Jacir Gellery, Bethlehem.).
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Images References
Fig. 1: Michael Rakowitz. Enemy Kitchen. 2003-ongoing. Mixed Media. MCA Chicago. Michael
Rakowitz Web. 14 Dec. 2020 http://www.michaelrakowitz.com/enemy-kitchen JPEG File.
Fig. 2: Michael Rakowitz. Enemy Kitchen (Food truck). 2003-ongoing. Mixed Media. MCA Chicago.
Kickstarter Web. 14 Dec 2020 https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/801305394/enemy-kitchen-bymichael-rakowitz-at-mca-chicago/description JPEG File