Tofu

SIMONE WEIL ON LABOR AND SPIRIT - Inese Radzins

While studying in London, I became increasingly drawn to the question of how food, as labor, shapes women’s lives. It was no longer about memory alone—it was about the weight of repetition, the quiet violence of care, and the invisible rhythms passed down through generations.

I began sculpting small tofu-shaped forms using hanji pulp—soft, absorbent, yet holding shape. These forms became markers of the body’s endurance: fragile yet persistent. I also painted my mother as she slept—her body folded like crushed tofu, vulnerable yet full of strength. In these moments, I wasn’t just observing; I was tracing a lineage of exhaustion, love, and labor.

Through these works, I began to understand food not only as a material, but as a language of survival—a medium where spirit and flesh, history and repetition, dissolve into one. Simone Weil’s vision of labor as a spiritual site helped me see that these acts of making, of folding, of feeding, are not merely domestic—they are sacred.

Mom, mulberry pulp, 29 × 29 × 18 cm, 2024

Air and Dream (L’air et les songes), Video, 2024

Dreaming (in Switzerland), Pencil on paper, 13 x 21 cm, 2024