ROZ WHITELEY

Care in the Kitchen



ARTIST BIO


roz whiteley is a queer artist and researcher based in Reading, UK. She cares about food, femininity, fatness and bodies. She cares about how these things are represented in pop discourses and how art might provide a strategy for talking about them. She enjoys pop culture and vulnerability and aims to make work that delicately considers and interweaves (auto)biographical narratives and personal stories with sociocultural politics and identities. She aims to make art/research that is both engaging and engaged, inviting people to think and talk about ideas in exciting ways.

roz obtained a BA in Drama from Queen Mary in 2019 and is currently undertaking MA Performance Practice as Research at The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama. She has shared work across a variety of settings, including performances in Crystal Bollix’s Definitely Maybe Actually Nevermind (London and Leicester), performing with her-pees collective and with Soho Young Company’s Drag and Cabaret Lab.
Care in the Kitchen is a project that aims to create space to centralise care within a discourse about food, bodies and eating. Across several weeks, I have been sending people some of my favourite meals, packaging up notes, ingredients and instructions into parcels sent through the post. In return, I have asked that they send a letter sharing what care looks like in their kitchen, writing a story about a meal they make for people they care about. The responses have been personal, providing intimate insights into positive, loving relationships that have been forged through the acts of cooking and eating. After reading their letters, I have prepared their meals in my own kitchen, completing an exchange of care practices between the two bodies across space.

During Brink Festival 2020, I will be sharing this practice through a series of interactive text, audio and video performances, creating a cooking show where you’re the chef. These nightly performances will extend the discourses that have been circulating throughout the postal communication, taking it online and opening it up to a wider audience.