Women who cook rice, Single-channel video, 06:43, 2023
In Korean society, the most frequent and historically significant labor, ingrained over many years, is the act of 'cooking＇ rice. In Korean culinary culture, 'rice' and 'meal' are inevitable subjects where women from different generations gather to perform.
Among the members of our family, all the women are the ones who 'cook' meals. They are always close to the kitchen, contemplating what to cook three times a day. However, in this video, they are portrayed as individuals who perform unfamiliar actions regarding meals, seen engaging in new performances associated with cooking.
They play with the rice, scatter or toss it, or even lie down on it. The actions they express with regard to 'cooking' through their bodies represent various emotions and words related to it, as highlighted through a preliminary survey. Words like burden, responsibility, repetition, and inevitability were predominant in shaping the diverse emotions associated with rice-cooking.