Hot Skillet Mama

The title of Hot Skillet Mama is a reference to a piece of music by legendary American jazz composer Sun Ra (1914-1993). Hot Skillet Mama’s lyrics express the singer’s desire for a woman, sweating away hard at work in her kitchen, whose loud and aggressive clamouring with pots and pans is expressed in the music’s metallic percussion. Siem refers to the theme of cooking by incorporating various domestic instruments into the figures. The kitchen tools are also a reference to Martha Rosler’s ground-breaking feminist art video Semiotics of the kitchen (1975), in which the artist parades a list of cooking tools before the camera in a frustrated and aggressive manner. Siem’s references to Rosler’s video work and Sun Ra’s song serve as commentaries on the presumed position of women in male-dominated social order.

For the artist, jazz musicians’ searching for an authentic sound underlines her own ardent desire for artistic liberty that stretches beyond conventions. Similarly to Sun Ra, who to maintain his autonomy from the music industry produced a substantial number of his records independently and in small editions, Siem also cherishes her own artistic freedom, preferring to work on her own terms and at a distance from the commercial art world.