Rasa Jansone

Collage series by Rasa Jansone

Three Courses and Dessert On Top (2020)

Collage series combine oil painting with pictures cut from glossy magazines. During the spring 2020 lockdown, when the movement outside home was restricted to trips to grocery store and pharmacy, the artist began cutting out images from magazines found at home: the discontinued Latvian culinary magazine Četras Sezonas (Four Seasons) and the internationally renowned National Geographic magazine. Both contained a surprising number of ads for beauty products and luxury goods, and the requisite smiling faces offering these goods to us. An almond milk smoothie and tropical forest can both be photographed and printed in an exquisitely aesthetic manner, and – as always accompanied by a smiling woman’s face – topped off with a jaunty (and expensive!) bid for a healthier lifestyle. Though, how often creative self-expression in the kitchen becomes a trap, particularly for women? Haven’t the lockdown experiences of mothers with small children, confined to their kitchen offices against their will, revealed that? Shouldn’t the statistics that show increase in domestic violence be a cause for distress? There is no artistry in being tethered to the kitchen – it is just expertly marketed femininity, which by instructing you to „mix butter with flour, knead until moist dough forms and leave it to rest for half-an-hour“ lures you to continue the journey into the world of compliments („you’re so good at this, darling!“) and hidden threats („is dinner ready yet?“)

The title of the collages is a nod to the collage technique – the images are created by assembling several ingredients – as well as attempts to conjure the image of a sophisticated restaurant meal, consisting of several courses, served and enjoyed over an evening.

Rasa Jansone is a well-known Latvian painter and installation artist. She often uses text in her artworks, and regularly publishes in Latvian cultural media.