Wozen Studio
Lisbon, July 2018
At the start of this residency, Inês Neto dos Santos built a temporary kitchen for the studio. To be used by the residency artists, for daily group breakfasts, this space (extended by a makeshift dining table) aimed to fulfil her dream of the kitchen table as the ultimate Temporary Utopian Zone.
Inevitably, the intention to have daily group breakfasts failed and so, in an attempt to keep the kitchen alive, Inês turned it into an ice cream studio: producing a new ice cream everyday, with tailor-made flavours to suit every ZUT artists’ practice. Relentlessly chopping fruit, stirring custards and churning candy-coloured mixes each day, her Daily Ices soon became representative of a kind of Utopian dream of her own. Containing seasonal flavours of local fruits, each ice cream preserved a piece of the Lisbon summer in it (including her fellow artists), working as site-specific pieces. To be savoured in the studio, where no freezer exists, each ice cream inevitably melts in its cup, down our hands, fingers and chin, forcing us to lick, slurp, wipe each drop in a futile attempt to keep that last driblet of summer from escaping.
Daily Ices is a piece that grapples the failures inherent to Utopia, understanding them as turning points to move forward or start again.
Daily Ices is made up of combinations of flavours inspired by Inês’s fellow artists in residence:
A cheeseburger, nearly for Thomas Langley (tomato sorbet, cream cheese ice cream, brioche bun)
Tripplesapiens Lick for Ped.Moreira (cucumber and lime popsicle, grapefruit glaze)
Freezing myself into corners for Panos Papadoupolos (charcoal and blackberry, vanilla custard ice cream)
Fresh roots for Alice Bonnot (sweet potato and raspberry swirl, maple candied pecans)
Infinite Sandwich for fleuryfontaine (Layered chocolate biscuits, interspersed with prickly pear, coconut banana ice cream and blueberry sorbet)
Lucid dreaming for Sofia Stevi (black sesame and cherry ice creams)
All at once for Louise Ashcroft (Three granitas: watermelon, almond, cream)
