This photographic series, made to inaugurate the Queer Respirator project, depicts three drag personas - Dekadenca, Zed Zeldich Zed and Markiza de Sada - in an idealized version of the kitchen. It was in this particular space where people spent most of their time preparing food during the lockdown in an attempt to indulge themselves and to dream, for a moment, while escaping from news reports, Zoom meetings, other means of communication and screens.

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      To underline an array of emotions and projections through which we have all passed, as well as to address the hard times that have become our new normal, each scene is based on a coloristic dichotomy between light and costume/scenography, as well as the gestures/poses of the characters who are portrayed, almost akin to puppets in theatrical frame. The characters are set against simplistic meals arranged in a manner of historic still-life painting. Five scenes are accompanied by recipes written in a quirky fashion that expand upon the narrative of the series, also providing additional flavor and dimension.

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      An array of pop culture and art history references are woven thorough the series, with the two main inspirations coming from the iconic 1975 video performance Semiotics of The Kitchen by Martha Rosler and Peter Greenaway’s 1989 feature film The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover.

      To capture the essence of the most debated concepts during the global pandemic, such as isolation, boredom, exhaustion, fear, and rage, the Liminal Banquet offers a unique and critically engaged approach to queer storytelling in the domain of the visual arts.