“I really wanted to make it clear that this was a work that was about ignored women. That I was making a monument to women. I didn’t want it just to get lost in a haze of joy. Women have been washing dishes and baking pies for all eternity, and it’s a thankless task, and then there’s more. So I wanted to make a monument to that kind of labor. I wanted to make a monument to what is unsung.” — Liza Lou

Installed at the Whitney Museum of American Art, but currently closed due to COVID-19-related restrictions, is the outstanding exhibition Making Knowing: Craft in Art, 1950–2019. Featuring over 60 artists, the exhibition “foregrounds how visual artists have explored the materials, methods, and strategies of craft over the past seven decades.” A highlight of the exhibition is a rare installation of Liza Lou’s jaw-dropping masterwork, Kitchen (1991-1996). The exhibition is slated to run through the end of 2021 so here’s hoping it will reopen soon. Fortunately, we have this video from the Whitney, in which Liza Lou (b. 1969, New York) speaks about the work and its inspiration, while we also hear from curator Jennie Goldstein, and see some behind-the-scenes footage of its installation. If you’re not familiar with this extraordinary work – just watch the video.

From the Whitney:

Watch as Liza Lou reflects on her monumental installation Kitchen, a tribute to the unsung labor of women throughout time. Made over the course of five years, Kitchen presents a full-scale, exactingly detailed room encrusted in a rainbow of glistening glass beads. Through boxes of breakfast cereal, the poetry of Emily Dickinson, and everyday objects of kitchen drudgery, Lou created a glittery pop vision of suburban happiness to explore the complex role women have played in modern American life.