Taus Makhacheva, Caspian Sea, photo documentation of performance, cake. Uppsala Konstmuseum, 2014.
Taus Makhacheva (Russia/Dagestan) has a performance-based practice that questions traditional forms of history making as well as cultural and gender norms. Motivated by her Daghestani-Russian identity, her works seeks to reconcile the nostalgic with the contemporary and the local with the global. In particular, she is interested in looking at the structure of Caucasian society and the relationship between its history, the politics of collective memory and contemporary life.
Taus’s recent work has used food as a metaphor to articulate complex geopolitical histories, for instance some doctored archive film footage of Hitler slicing a cake in the shape of the Caspian Sea became the basis for a performance in which the cake was remade and offered to the audience. During her time at Delfina, Makhacheva worked on a book dedicated to the current Daghestani fashion for cakes depicting luxury items, alongside further research into the history of edible representations of countries in relationship to conquest.
With support from
THEMATIC PROGRAMME
The Politics of Food:
Season 2
RESIDENCY SEASON
Artist’s website
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