THE BRICKS OF OUR HOME
CREATIVE DIRECTION – SET DESIGN – RESEARCH
Is an artistic proposal that aims to explore and highlight the importance of salt as a primary and necessary element, metaphorically connecting it with each individual’s food culture in order to narrate the direct link between the act of eating and home: nowadays living abroad is common for the younger generations for which the practice of preparing food represents a way of being Home away from Home.
Food engages everyone, passively and actively: we propose an event in the form of a communal feast that makes the guests reflect upon the sense of belonging and mobilising food as the main medium. In the history of mankind, every age and every culture has been celebrated around the “table”. From the early Greek and Mediaeval celebrations, up to our recent history, the act of eating surpasses that of consuming, wherein the meal itself becomes the medium through which the human and other-than-human, the synthetic and the natural, come together in one plate.
Locating the table within the Larnaca Salt Lake* acts as an instigator of a subdued nostalgia, forming a visual connection with the place of natural formation, extraction, production, consumption, absorption and eventually activation. By condensing the life trajectory of salt, up to the point it reaches our taste palette, allows the guests to become connoisseurs of salt not only as a primordial flavour but also as a rather familiar one. Salt is present in every culture, sparking every conversation, bursting every emotion, but most importantly is part of every one of us both bodily and spiritually. The dinner aims to invite the guests to discover the presence of salt around them, within them and among them through the most routed act of housekeeping, that of eating together.
“The bricks of your home are made of sweat and tears”. “The bricks of your home are made of sweat and tears”.
The house, in its physical absence becomes irrelevant to the act, giving agency to that of sharing around the salt table; be it sharing a meal, a conversation, a celebration or all the things we do in order to feel like home. The feast will be set up on a bespoke table made out of salt bricks, the main support of the installation, and it will be orchestrated around a series of special plates and salt sculptures located directly on the surface, creating a surreal landscape. The served food will be a reinvented version of a typical Cypriot feast (ie. Trahana soup, Koupepia, Makaronia tou Fournou) using as primary elements vegetables that will be fermented and processed with ancestral techniques of storing based on salt transformation, celebrating its nostalgic use (in salt, in brine, lacto fermentation). For us the format of the table acts as a static display that narrates the story, which also allows for the potential of transforming it into an active medium of performance. The choice of “positioning” the table at the centre of our proposal is a conceptual gesture that strengthens the link between the daily act of eating and its social catalyst as a soft power medium.
This project is a joint venture with external collaborators.