FROM CRAB TO CRAB, FROM SHELL TO SHELL
Glazed ceramic, 52 x 45 cm 2022
PLANTING RESILIANCE
Wax, temporary tattoos, varnish, each 2 x 3 cm, 2022
A UNIT IS STRONGER THAN ONE
Wax, lacquer, nylon thread, dimensions variable, 2022
MONUMENTS FOR SEEDS
Tin molding of seeds, milk thread, curtain (variable), dimensions of the curtain variable, 2022
PROTECTING CARRIERS
Serving dishes, ceramic, wax, salt 2022
EL CAMPO RESISTE
Silikon, Hasendraht, 45 x 45 cm, 2022
RESISTING RECIPES
Mural, achiote, ginger and cinnamon, dimensions variable, 2022
WE COOKED THE MOUNTAINS, WE COOKED THE SEA
Glasierte Keramik, Salz, 38 x 15 cm, 2022
COMPANION 14
Silicone, tin, 32 x 30 x 12 cm, 2021
To All My Roaring Bodies, The Seeds And The Mountains
"Resistance can mean remembering recipes and ingredients taken by force while breaking and rewriting traditions." — Lucila Pacheco Dehne, 2022
With Lucila Pacheco Dehne’s solo exhibition To All My Roaring Bodies, The Seeds And The Mountains, the Kestner Gesellschaft is initiating a new cycle in its exhibition program under the title Future Scenarios, which presents current artworks by younger, up-and-coming artists, the “new contemporaries” from the local scene. Future Scenarios is a nomadic and parasitic format of an ephemeral nature, which reacts to the architecture of the Kestner Gesellschaft and pursues a strategy of unexpected appearance and breaking up as a modus operandi.
At the Kestner Gesellschaft, Pacheco Dehne has created an unreal and surrealistic scene in which the certainties of the known world are shifted. To All My Roaring Bodies, The Seeds And The Mountains is the first exhibition to occupy the space on the way to the kitchen. She investigates the lost meaning of the site and explores the potential of cooking as a cultural practice that, at its core, harbors a resistive force. Pacheco Dehne opens a dialogue about how cooking and eating together creates new identities, how feminist anger makes use of cultural technique, and the kitchen distributes its power into the world as a cell of resistance.
For the transitional site, Pacheco Dehne has made a series of new sculptures and ceramics, which she presents on abandoned serving trolleys in the context of already existing works. Confronted with Pacheco Dehne’s wall text A Soup (2022), a poetic recipe that tells of anger and hunger, a wavy curtain stretches out across from it. Silver plant seeds were tied between the fabric with milky threads. Above the carpet, which fragments the space and divides it into a beige-violet color field, several ceramic pots filled with salt stand on a ledge. The sound work Canción Sin Fin (2022) creates the background noise of an improvised cacerolazo, a practice from South America in which pots are banged on with spoons at demonstrations and protests.
In her exhibition, Pacheco Dehne constructs a future scenario in which cooking becomes a significant moment in our collective actions, allowing for reflection on and redefinition of the experience of cultural as well as personal identity. For the first time in its history, Pacheco Dehne has activated the kitchen at the Kestner Gesellschaft for an exchange through sensual and angry thoughts about food.
Photos: Volker Crone