Cooking Memory Remembrances is reactivation of a 2017 performance called Cooking Memory where Lia Garcia returns broken ceramics to their home in Elsewhere’s kitchen. The performance creates an intimate space to reflect on creating resistance to the violence against trans lives, what exists outside of hegemonic femininity, what it means to touch, and what stories are told in the kitchen.

David Alpert (Kansas City, MO) | Exchange (Kansas City) | August 2021

Stained-Glass Storage furthers the aestheticization of Elsewhere Museum’s former thrift store products through visually focused storage. Artist—David Alpert—built wood shelves across one of two kitchen windows. He collected and organized stained-glass objects from the Museum onto these shelves, mimicking a stained-glass window. The majority of former thrift store objects at Elsewhere live out-of-reach from museum visitors. In essence, Elsewhere transforms these functional ephemera into aesthetic compositions. Stained-Glass Storage brings this object-use shift clearly into focus. Alpert flips jars, stacks ashtrays on plates, and balances bottles into vases. Traditionally, these items would either be used for initially intended purposes or stored for optimal space efficiency. Alpert reinterprets these domestic objects as purely sculptural, at least for a moment. Because the stained-glass items are placed instead of attached, they can be rearranged to create countless compositions. In fact, Alpert regularly pulled out the step ladder and reorganized Stained-Glass Storage throughout his fellowship, often times with the direction of the other artists who happened to be in the kitchen. In this way, Stained-Glass Storage progresses Elsewhere’s curation of out-of-use goods, inviting ongoing collaboration and enhanced visibility.

Cooking Memory is a performance by Mexican artist Lia García that deals with tenderness and love as spaces of resistance. In times of violence towards trans lives, where does the resistance come from? What does it mean to touch? What stories are told in the kitchen? Broken lives are important and it is time to talk about ourselves in a space of intimacy, memory, and affection.