Twenty-first-century Galician food femininities in Lorena Conde’s Santa Inés and Oliver Laxe’s O que arde | Intellect Skip to content
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(Re)Producing Galician Femininities: Women’s Creative Praxis in 21st-Century Galicia
  • ISSN: 1364-971X
  • E-ISSN: 1758-9150

Abstract

Food metaphors and symbols are found everywhere in contemporary cultural production in Galicia, where food constitutes a key identity marker. Given the close connections between food and gender, the artistic representation of food is an excellent field to investigate Galician food femininities. This article examines two such examples. The play (2019), written and directed by Lorena Conde, and produced by A Feroz Teatro, is a feminist response, rich in food symbolism, to the Judeo-Christian metaphor of woman as sacrificial lamb. Drawing on the historical figure St Agnes of Rome (CE 291–304) and the childhood memories visiting a local convent of Inés Salvado, who plays the only characters onstage, the play discusses bodily autonomy and female mysticism. The film (2019) by Oliver Laxe, a key filmmaker of the , is a spiritually oriented work about middle-aged Amador who returns home to his elderly mother, Benedicta, after serving an arson sentence for burning a forest down. In the film, food, constantly present but in a subtle way, is both an earthly and a spiritual element that plays a key role in the construction of Benedicta’s gendered ageing identity.

Resumo

As metáforas e símbolos alimentarios son ubicuos na produción cultural contemporánea en Galicia, onde a comida é un elemento identitario de primeira orde. Dadas as conexións entre a comida e o xénero, a representación artística da comida é un excelente campo para investigar as feminidades alimentarias galegas. Este artigo examina dous exemplos. A obra (2019), escrita e dirixida por Lorena Conde, e producida por A Feroz Teatro, é unha resposta feminista, rica en simbolismo alimentario, á metáfora xudeocristiá da muller como año sacrificado. Baseada na figura histórica de Santa Inés de Roma (e.c. 291–304) e nas lembranzas infantís das visitas a un convento de Inés Salvado, a única actriz que interpreta as personaxes no escenario, a obra trata sobre a autonomía corporal e o misticismo feminino. O filme (2019) de Oliver Laxe, importante cineasta do , é unha obra espiritual sobre Amador, un home de mediana idade que regresa á casa da súa nai anciá, Benedicta, tras cumprir unha condena por provocar un incendio forestal. Na película, a comida, constantemente presente mais dun xeito sutil, é un elemento tanto terrenal coma espiritual que xoga un papel fundamental na construción da identidade de Benedicta como muller que avellenta.

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2023-01-24
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  • Article Type: Article
Keyword(s): estudos fílmicos da alimentación; estudos literarios da alimentación; feminismos; feminisms; film food studies; literary food studies; Novo Cinema Galego; O que arde; Santa Inés; teatro; theatre

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