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AH 401 Gender, Art & Western Culture Compendium: Fall 2020

Woman in the Kitchen, c. 1950s.

This page is referenced by:

Martha Rosler and The Semiotics of Womanhood
Semiotics and language, as with most other things, derive from something deep within our history or culture. The human race uses language to not only convey meaning, but also connect certain words or phrases to objects or concepts. According to linguist Ferdinand de Saussure, semiotics is the examination of how a sign, which “is conceived of as [a] dyadic entity formed by the indivisible combination of a signifier and a signified,” connects to what it represents. For artist Martha Rosler, semiotics could be used in a way to address and deconstruct some issues that have been circulating around the globe for far too long. In her Semiotics of the Kitchen, 1975, Rosler films herself in a kitchen, alphabetically listing off objects to the viewer while she holds them up and shows off their “functionality.” As the video progresses, Rosler becomes more careless, eventually listing off the final numbers starting at the letter “U” and ending with “Z,” remaining within the frame, still and gazing at us, until the very end. Although the performance of Semiotics of the Kitchen on the surface seems sloppy and unmotivated, Rosler suggests a far deeper meaning with how she as the performer is portrayed within the frame as well as the “signs,” words, and objects she uses.
Rosler waits within a fairly typical kitchen, staring directly at the viewer while displaying the chalkboard sign that reads “Semiotics of the Kitchen, ©’75 M. Rosler.” In an interview with Jane Weinstock, a writer for the October academic magazine, Martha Rosler states:
"I think video is particularly useful because it's portable and easily available, and it's a form with which people are familiar. My video confronts many of the comfortable patterns of response. So when I'm using the TV set to address an issue, I also take account of what normally appears on the set. But even though my work is critical of TV, audiences tend to accept it simply because it comes out of the set: it is TV, though strange TV."
By looking at the viewer, Rosler is immediately “confronting” these “comfortable patterns of response,” with uncomfortably breaking the fourth wall, drawing us into the presentation at hand. This is almost like a teacher silently staring at her loud students, signaling them to quiet down. Rosler then sets down the sign and begins her list of objects around the kitchen, starting with “Apron.” As she goes through the alphabet, the audience becomes startled with how she uses some of the kitchen utensils. Including the “Fork,” which she uses in a stabbing motion, or the “Ladle,” where she simply mimes scooping something up and tossing it over her left shoulder. Rosler states that, “The protagonist is seen as aggressive and expressing anger in a situation in which that doesn't usually occur (though women most often murder their husbands in the kitchen). Audience reaction… has been of that kind.” With the first couple objects that Rosler lists in Semiotics of the Kitchen, she shows us exactly how they are supposed to be used. However, starting with the “Chopper,” in which she rapidly, and somewhat aggressively, cuts into the bowl itself, Rolser diverges from the objects’ intended uses. We as the audience are thrown off and surprised at this moment. On television, people had been used to seeing depictions of the typical “housewife” maneuvering around the kitchen with grace and joy. The frustration in Rosler’s movements explores how confining these expectations are for women.
She addresses us as students, through very elementary means, instructing about various tools in the kitchen and how they are used. The usage of a chalkboard in the beginning reflects upon a typical school-like nature as Rosler shows us the title of the lecture we are about to hear. With the rise of modern exhibits and museums, Rosler understands that her audience will consist of both male and female. For a male viewer, the video serves a sort of instructional video for how to be “proficient” in the kitchen, causing a surprised and confused reaction with the objects she uses in the “incorrect way.” On the other hand, Rosler explores that, “The very expression of anger in a context of everyday life is liberating for women.” With this feeling of liberation, a female viewer should have an opposite, yet still surprised, reaction. Instead, the surprise of it all comes from the boldness of “the protagonist’s” actions within the video. Confined as she looks within the space, Rosler suggests that these “expressions of anger” make women truly feel “liberated.” Female students had been taught since a very young age the “necessary conformities” that had been expected of them. Rosler attempts to free this notion by rebelling against the confines of the kitchen women are put in while utilizing a classroom-like instructional approach.

Words and the alphabet are utilized in very particular ways throughout Semiotics of the Kitchen. In the interview with Weinstock, Rosler argues:

"A letter is such a nakedly reduced thing. It has no meaning, no weight, but it's essential in constructing a system of meaning, of written language. It names a sound, arbitrarily, not an idea. I was suggesting that the signs imposed on women are extremely diminishing. This woman is implicated in a system of extreme reduction with respect to herself as a self."

The woman lists these words in alphabetical order. Through semiotics, we derive meaning from these words representing tools used commonly in the kitchen. We then see the visible form tied to that “sign,” triggering in our brain a connection between the two. This notion of breaking down semiotics is reminiscent of works like Joseph Kosuth’s One and Three Chairs, 1965, with three visible representations of what the word “chair” means to us. Rosler is adding another idea on top of this in the actual function of the object in which, for many of them, she uses “incorrectly.” The “signs” Rosler shows in the video are tied to or “imposed on women” by expectation and the constraints of society. Instead of using the tools as expected, Rosler brings up new interpretations of how these objects could function outside the constraints of the kitchen. Rosler states that, “She names the implements, ordered according to the alphabet, but by the time she reaches the last letters, she is being named, transformed into reduced, essentially meaningless signs-x, y, z.” Although she re-interprets the uses of the tools she displays throughout the video, by the end, Rosler herself becomes one of those very tools, forming her body in the shapes of these “meaningless signs.” Letters, in their nature, are meaningless and only serve to build words. By making herself into the final letters of the alphabet, Rolser visually explores the embedded notion that the woman only serves as a “tool,” in charge of the going-ons within her kitchen. Here, Rosler was, “Concerned with something like the notion of ‘language speaking the subject,’ and with the transformation of the woman herself into a sign in a system of signs that represents a system of food production, a system of harnessed subjectivity.” After being mostly accepted in the workforce during World War II, women sadly had been forced back to the initial expectations of taking care of the family and the household. This was even advertised through newspaper clippings, advertising the shiny pots and pans that were supposed to attract women back to maintaining the kitchen. In Semiotics of the Kitchen, Rosler shows us her own new shiny pots and pans, along with other kitchen related items. By transforming her body into the final letters, she becomes one of these objects and part of the very “system” that developed these types of advertisements. In the same interview with Weinstock, Rosler asks, “Did I say language is oppressive? It can be. Language can be an instrument of control, or of liberation.” Instead of simply showing the tasks to us, Rosler decides to speak. The language she uses within the video typically was utilized in her day by those who meant to subjugate women. Rosler speaking up, allows her to take back this language, liberating its connotations from subjectivity.

During the final moments of the video, she remains “still there at the end, stuck to the spot, no further brutalized than at the beginning.” Externally, Rosler’s character is by no means hurt or “brutalized.” The struggle that women go through being subjugated to the kitchen doesn’t typically have external consequences. However, Rosler screams out internally for feeling stuck to this one spot all day, doing only tasks that she is “expected” to do. She explores in the interview, “Until you face your own anger, you can't get rid of it or channel it constructively.” Here, she is doing just that; facing her anger head on. As opposed to using these tools or semiotics as women had been subjugated to do for hundreds of years, Martha Rosler calls for a revolution in how they will continue to be used for years to come.