Frankfurt Kitchen

Eighteen months ago Liebling Haus installed an original Frankfurt Kitchen – a seemingly pioneering workspace designed in the spirit of modernism by Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky. This symbol of women’s liberation is now subject to the second phase of the exhibition, which offers a more complex view of that feminist existence then and now. In works of video and sound concealed throughout the kitchen, Ohad Kabri, Nova Dobel, and Angela Anzi explore the place of women in the 20th century, moving from the private through the domestic to the public and political.

The kitchen was gifted in 2021 by the Ernst May Gesellschaft and Frankfurt Municipality to mark 40 years of the twin town relationship between Frankfurt and Tel Aviv-Yafo. 

Curator: Shira Levy Benyemini; production: Noam Bar

The works

Frankfurt Kitchen – Serves You Right

 Three videos and one sound work, all concealed in various locations in the kitchen. Through these works, the artists enhance the experience of the kitchen as a cultural process that began as a feminist herald and symbol of progress in the 1920s, its integration in Eretz Israel-Palestine, and the experience of the contemporary modern kitchen as a completely different type of space.

Local Flavors

Ohad Kabri and Nova Dobel

The wall of the refrigerator space in the Frankfurt Kitchen has a hole meant to ventilate the fridge. From this hole emerges a female mouth, wearing lipstick that bites into local dishes made by generations of mothers. One after the other, the mouth is served with slices of melon, pita-pizza, a spoonful of jelly, a piece of plain bread with white cheese, and a chocolate cake. Recipes from cookbooks published at the time of the establishment of the State and its first decades, How to Cook in Palestine, From the Kitchen with Love, Cakes for Every Occasion, and other books that were to be found in every kitchen are displayed. The video examines the figure of the women in these books, as a nourishing figure who is herself undernourished, a feeder who is expected to eat little and politely.

Video

3:26 min

Videography: Ohad Kabri

Performance: Nova Dobel

Dish of the Day

Ohad Kabri and Nova Dobel

A messy pile of screens together forms a ritual for preparing a fried egg. The bottom screen displays the gas hob, above which is a screen with the frying pan, and on the top of the pile is a cell phone playing a loop of an egg being fried over and again.

The kitchen is first and foremost a room in which food is prepared, the source of the nourishment of the household. Its central role has led over time and cultures to the development of different rituals concerning the preparation and consumption of food, from grand royal banquets to Bedouin hosting traditions.

In our time and place these rituals still involve forks and plates and remain attached to the need to satisfy the body. However, new tools, screens, and cameras have entered the mix and the body is now nourished by more than just the caloric values of the food it digests – likes, comments, and social worth are also part of the equation.

0:54 min

Sweet Tongue

Angela Anzi

A sound work by the Swiss artist Angela Anzi, a collaborator on the research for this exhibition. The piece is housed in a porcelain teapot that completes an original set from the period of the kitchen. The teapot is a replica of the original, yet when its lid is removed it reveals a dial phone earpiece that can be pressed against the ear to listen to the words it emits.

Frankfurt Kitchens are displayed in museums around the world as symbols of modernist design. They present a historical feminine space without questioning  the social models that inform it. The sound work Sweet Tongue invites listeners to play a role-playing game. The female voice gives delicate compliments, describes images of gender attributions, and sings using a language of imagery that evokes unity and solidarity. The speaker’s perspective shifts over time transitioning from second- to first-person speech. The text repeats itself yet changes and evolves with each iteration just as the modernist narrative of the Frankfurt Kitchen is constructed and updated repeatedly, often eliminating the spatial division of gendered work.

The artist treats repetition as an opportunity for renewed internal interpretation. Sweet Tongue uses metaphorical means to contemplate the Frankfurt Kitchen as a space for construction and social constructs.

Writer: Angela Anzi

Voice: Sabine Schädler

Jug design: Ohad Kabri

Jug production: Talia Shoval - Cérame Pottery

Framed still photographs