"The first time I began organizing this event was in summer 2006 in the kitchen of at the arts school in Mainz_Germany. which had been already four years without seeing my mom (after my emigration from Iraq).That was the first encounter with the fact how I would feel when i see her within making this cooking event.
For me when I involve somebody who is so related to me for so many years in my work via internet is mixture of many things which is not that easy to inbody them by using words.
There was such a distance to her in spite of my longing to see her made me quite incertain how to continue with this digital mama,is it her or not? That what i was asking my self the whole time.
Sure it was mama ,she was demanding the same things as she used to be,I should be polide,lestening to her and translating her cooking structure exactly to my cooking team(we cook every friday for the whole academy).
So as I come from another culture and my not belonging to the western tradition of art and having another possition which contradicts produce art which could be very easiely seen as comodity nowaday,I focused more on kind of affemiral works and and also more personal.
Items which I can share it with the team and each one in the whole academie also (who know my mom now by the way).
And also I feel very intemit to the cooking team, who are also good friends of mine.So being the position of translating a certaine food structure which is hundreds years old and from defenitly another reality and way of understanding for diligatesse and translating it in another eurupian language and helping the team to cook what I have been eating for so many years and share this taste with the whole students of the academy is creating another space which goes deyond the art school as an institution.Its about closeness,about sharing,about understaning of the others."
Cooking with Mama, 2006-ongoing
video
Hiwa K
Hiwa K was born in Kurdistan-Northern Iraq in 1975. His informal studies in his home town Sulaymaniyah were focused on European literature and philosophy, learnt from available books translated into Arabic. After moving to Europe in 2002, Hiwa K studied music as a pupil of the Flamenco master Paco Peña in Rotterdam, and subsequently settled in Germany. His works escape normative aesthetics but give a possibility of another vibration to vernacular forms, oral histories (Chicago boys, 2010), modes of encounter (Cooking with Mama, 2006) and political situations (This lemon tastes of apple, 2011). The repository of his references consists of stories told by family members and friends, found situations as well as everyday forms that are the products of pragmatics and necessity. He continthuously critiques the art education system and the professionalization of art practice, as well as the myth of the individual artist. Many of his works have a strong collective and participatory dimension, and express the concept of obtaining knowledge from everyday experience rather than doctrine. Hiwa K participated in various group shows such as Manifesta 7, Trient (2008), La Triennale, Intense Proximity, Paris (2012), the “Edgware Road Project” at the Serpentine Gallery, London (2012), the Venice Biennale (2015) and documenta14, Kassel/Athens (2017). A selection of recent solo shows include the New Museum, NYC (2018), S.M.A.K., Ghent (2018), Kunstverein Hannover (2018), Jameel Arts Center Dubai (2020), Museum Abteiberg (2021) and The Power Plant (Toronto (2022). He has recieved several prizes such as in 2016 the Arnold Bode Prize and the Schering Stiftung Art Award and the latest being the Hector Prize in 2019.
- Anna Boghiguian
- Candice Breitz
- Marco A. Castillo
- CATPC
- Alice Creischer
- Chto Delat
- Clegg & Guttmann
- Eugenio Dittborn
- Heinrich Dunst
- Anna Ehrenstein
- Estate of León Ferrari
- Peter Friedl
- Sophie Gogl
- Estate of Barbara Hammer
- The Cabinet of Ramon Haze
- Hiwa K
- Simon Lehner
- Renzo Martens
- Chris Martin
- Frédéric Moser & Philippe Schwinger
- Oswald Oberhuber
- Mario Pfeifer
- Dierk Schmidt
- Santiago Sierra
- Michael E. Smith
- Franz Erhard Walther
- Clemens von Wedemeyer
- Tobias Zielony