Martha Rosler, Semiotics of the Kitchen, 1975
Martha Rosler
Semiotics of the Kitchen

Since the early 1970s, Martha Rosler’s (*1943, USA) works have constructed social and political analyses of the myths and socio-political realities of contemporary culture. Her video works investigate with deadpan wit how socio-economic realities and political ideologies dominate ordinary life. Presenting complex critical analyses in accessible forms, Rosler merges performance, narrative, documentary and mass media images.

artist's website: www.martharosler.net

Semiotics of the Kitchen adopts the form of a parodist cooking demonstration. On a counter before the artist are a variety of utensils, each of which she picks up, names and proceeds to demonstrate, but with gestures that are increasingly marked by frustration and anger and depart from the normal uses of the respective tools and into a kind of mad music of sound and gesture.

Courtesy Video Data Bank, Chicago
Document media
Video, b&w, sound, 7:00 min

Issue date
1975

Relations
Laura Cottingham (COT 1)

Tags
language, housework/carework, resistance