performanceIlaria TurbaA table of breads and wishes

A very long table in the heart of the village of Fontecchio welcomes Ilaria Turba’s participatory performance-installation.

Arriving directly from the northern districts of Marseilles is the new ritual tradition the loaves of desire – les pains du désir invented by the artist. Each bread, made collectively, is the materialisation of a desire, a story, an imagination of the person who created it and, more generally, embodies that ancient Mediterranean culture that has built around bread a dense network of relationships and a way of creating community. Unlike other votive objects, ritual breads are eaten and the material they are made of is assimilated into the body and so is their symbolic content. Days before the performance, the artist reactivates Fontecchio’s 15th-century communal oven, inviting residents to create loaves of desire to offer to the public. During the performance, people will in fact be invited to sit at the table and exchange loaves and wishes with each other, with an invitation to share, to listen and to dialogue.