Kitchen. The Magical Everyday Life, 2019

Lumber, fiberboard, wallpaper, linoleum, paint, electrical appliances, furniture

“Kitchen. The Magical Everyday Life” is an installation that invites one to experience the inevitable magic of our kitchens. This particular kitchen supposedly exists in one of the block houses of Lithuania in the colourful and promising year of 2003. The visitors are invited to feel just like at home here – have a snack from the fridge, bring their own meal, talk to each other, find a radio station that they like, relax and just be. Kitchens remind us that fundamentally some of the most important few things for us humans are safety and warmth. It is an individually built, fully equipped object just like a real kitchen would be. It can also serve as a glimpse into the world of the cinema production and can help its visitor imagine what would a film decoration look like if it was reachable every day. A video was filmed at this kitchen during the first two days of the exhibition and later edited into a short video with the most natural moments the “secret” camera could capture. This kitchen is a result of Paulina’s artistic research that took nearly two years to complete. During this research the artist was questioning why it is in our kitchens that the best spontaneous parties happen, the biggest secrets are revealed and even revolutions are being born. How can such things happen within a space of boiling pots, spitting grease and dirty dishes? There can be many answers. Some of them are laid out in the diary which is waiting for the visitors’ thoughts to be written down and can be found on the kitchen table. But truly the answers are always there in any kitchen whether it be this one or our own. The kitchen was first exhibited at Užupio meno inkubatorius in Vilnius during a two-week solo exhibition with the same title as the installation. The artist would like for it to become a travelling kitchen as the research could continue and reveal how each audience reacts to it differently depending on its background as well as the space where the kitchen is set up.