Waste Not

Waste Not. Over 6 hours Jenkins slowly chewed yarn and tinned food, feeding the paste onto the ground to spell the message, ‘You Will Lay Her Life To Waste‘. Audience members were then invited to sweep the work into a pile which was wrapped and discarded.

What is a waste of time? What is a waste of energy? Who is wasteful?

Activities considered ‘domestic’ and associated with women, such as cooking and knitting, are often judged wasteful and selfish if they are not performed to service others – if you cook, you must feed others; if you knit, you must clothe others – while activities that tend to be considered the domain of men, such as painting or metalwork, are regarded as valid when used solely as a form of expression.
As a feminine presenting performance artist who utilizes textiles, Jenkins has often been told to do “something useful” and “knit a hat for the homeless”. In Waste Not they used edible and soft materials to create a temporary large-scale installation response to the pervasive voices who regard expressions from women as wasted energy.