Rescued by the artist’s mother when fleeing the war, their cherished family cookbook is a foundational family archive for her work Dumplings, borscht and boiled tongue. The book reflects family identity continuously “in the making,” morphing, partially collapsing into and bouncing back from the soviet collective understanding of the proper way of living.
With Southern Ukrainian heritage, it is sometimes difficult to draw a distinction between what is, and what is not, true modern Ukrainian identity. The Ideal recipe has been contaminated by long-preserved soviet influences expressed through language, cuisine, visual culture and other mediums. These focal-points for identity are examined in the artist's ongoing attempt to reconcile various narratives from the past 70 years and identifying traces of the original Ukrainian culture in their family history. This work strives to fully understand (or even try to) a personal history without distortion from colonial influences.
One of the USSR’s historical methods of eradicating local cultures was the creation of a common cuisine. In 1939, the first Book of Healthy and Tasty Food was published, with the goal of gathering many nations around one common table to “educate” people’s taste buds about what should constitute a “happy and fun life.” That cookbook contains recipes like lobster tail in white wine, and has highly aesthetic photos of the ingredients and dishes. Soviet cuisine was intended to be well-organized, clean, exquisitely decorated, and served according to the highest standards, with special attention paid to the order of the courses and specific cutlery and kitchenware mentioned in the book.
With its collected memories and recipes, Dumplings, borscht and boiled tongue, paints a picture in stark contrast to the indoctrinative works of the past. As Belasco mentioned in reference to Peter Farb and George Armelagos’ work, “cuisine is linked to a culture’s language - a system of communication that is inculcated from birth, if not before, and is hard to change or learn once you are grown. Even if you migrate elsewhere, you will likely retain the “accent” of your native cuisine.”
The hidden struggle between the preservation of a native “language” and forced assimilation into a newly-fabricated reality is prominently active in the kitchen. Cooking and eating together is a backbone of family relationships and community building, in which people are not ashamed of their native “accents.” Filtered through the lens of nostalgia, the presented work explores this struggle, and its crucial role in the re-creation of Ukrainian identity.
The presented work also serves as an invitation to join in the preparation of a family meal.