This oven stood in a large workroom on the first floor of a workshop. I was excited to connect it up whilst it was lying down. For me industry and rest are constant topics of inquirey. I like that if it were to be fired up in this reclining position it would eventually set fire to the floor potentially plummeting down to the ground flook and incinerating that too. In a way It could end up outside on the earth. The human/animal lags of this piece and the wide legged big bellied stance are typical of the mammy and angry black woman ideal. I like how hot and black are combined in this piece in a very real way and the danger of it. The fire in the belly reminds me of "The Fire next Time" . A female silent sun ra in the corner of the room.
Approaching it and looking in the open door requires something of the trepidation you have when approaching an open casket as is popular in many funerals in black America, Jamaica and black London.
As a "German" working with the body and ovens takes on a whole other dimension, it feels like a difficult but appropriate link to me between the African and Jewish diaspora. Difficult questions about entering the oven and being the oven arise. Also there are alien issues with burning identity and an identity of burning and what these could constitute. The immobility of this work is a tread running though many pieces as well as this one. Always I am asking what will enable what will disable in this context.