LINA JONIKĖ
1969
Lithuania
HE LIKES TOMATOES. 2011. Cotton, digital print, embroidery. Video. Installation.
I have started to take an interest in experiences and myths connected with tomatoes in 2007. This fruit is linked with Lithuanian style of living, family, healthy/unhealthy eating habits and petty market-gardening traditions which are disappearing from courtyards and seem to occupy the balconies of blockflats. A tomato in my work is a symbol giving a possibility to develop a talk and, through it, to get to know the person you deal with.
I will present several examples of my experience which gave me much inspiration to take up this subject:
1. Once my friend told me she liked tomatoes very much and could eat 2 kg at a time. I was shocked and decided to make a bet. Alas! I lost it! She swallowed those tomatoes easily as a candy without much effort while chatting with me.
2. I always wished to create a work associated with a plant life and a man’s. A central personage is a man. I asked my pregnant friend to be a poseur for my new work. It was spring and tomato sprouts where growing on my windows when she came to my studio. The meeting of a pregnant woman and tomato sprouts whispered a new story – a story of tomatoes and the birth of a child. Throughout all the spring I was creating that marvellous story. Tomato sprouts gave fruit and a baby was born.
3. I tried to dye cotton cloth with fresh tomatoes in 2008. To my amazement a red tomato picture faded after two weeks, while I was always scared of tomato stains on my clothes thinking they are unwashable. Then I came to a conclusion that sometimes we trust the information which is wrong.
That experiment made me get interested in tomatoes from a different angle:
A TOMATO as a FRUIT
A TOMATO as an UNKNOWN OBJECT
A TOMATO as MATERIAL for CREATION
A TOMATO as a HERO for a STORY
