For Standard Kitchen, Vasco Paiva collaborated with artisans in East Bali. Together, they used the traditional method of carving Batu Candi, a lava stone often used for building temples and shrines. The stone was shaped to create a life-sized replica of a modular kitchen to consider the processes and spaces that are integral to everyday life.

Here at YSP, the work appears in the landscape like a piece of future archaeology. In the way that we learned about the lives of people before us from their surviving artefacts, such as cooking implements and dwellings, future researchers might find Standard Kitchen and gain insight into the typical lifestyle and ritual of those living in the 21st century and their domestic spaces.

The human form is largely absent from the artist’s work, instead he uses the traces left by humanity as a way to evaluate its purpose. The artist states, “How space is designed says more about people than if I include the human body.”