Abstract
Liza Lou’s Kitchen (1991–96) is a work that is about domestic labor, specifically the maintenance work that happens in kitchens, and it is also about making the artist’s own labor manifest. To create this 168-square-foot installation, Lou constructed a replica kitchen and covered every surface with beads, each placed with tweezers and glue. This essay articulates how Lou’s experimental method of beadwork embeds themes of labor and time in relation to the politics of domesticity. Kitchen shares in the 1990s trends in feminist art that investigated historical conditions of labor through nontraditional artistic processes. It also employs then-familiar imagery of twentieth-century advertising, brand labels, and other visual culture to comment on the role of “housewife.” But rather than simply issuing a straight-forward critique, Kitchen reimagines the role of care—the value of attention and maintenance—through its decorative overabundance.
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