Bread, 2018

Van Eyck, Maastricht (NL)

Photographs by Romy Finke

With strong symbolic and ideological roots, bread has a significance beyond nutrition in many cultures, yet it is also a carrier of flavours, smell, moister and digestive functions. As humans, we do not have teeth or stomach to live on raw grains; bread as one of the first prepared food, formed societies, witnessed commerce and catalyse agriculture.
      What if bread itself were a landscape to explore flavours as well as cultural and biological meanings? Food, or edible materials, is a common ground and a story-telling device that creates a visceral interaction with the viewers. It is intimate and direct. It goes through us, like no other medium is able to do.
      The edible installation in her studio is the result of Rain Wu's own personal research into these relationships between food(s) and society & experience. As a sculptural form it stands on its own, but it is also inherently tied into to her role at the Van Eyck as the first participant to run the new Van Eyck Food Lab, whose aim is exactly to focus on these subjects, and cross-pollinate with other fields of research as well as other participants of the Van Eyck.