Kulturlabor residency closing event Kulturlabor - Goethe Institut x Institut Pasteur de Tunisie - L’Art Rue
“ Tell me what you throw away, and I'll tell you who you are . ”
Media : Photography , Field Investigation
Themes : Food
For several years, I had already been exploring ways of using food not simply as a subject of representation, but as a material in its own right. It therefore felt almost natural — and especially in light of the country’s current situation — to turn my attention to food waste and discarded food.
I began with the idea that identity and food are intimately connected. If we can say, “Tell me what you eat and I will tell you who you are,” then we might also say: “Tell me what you throw away and I will tell you who you are.”
How can food be displaced from its original context and transformed into a material for research and reflection, while retaining its symbolic and social charge?
Following in the footsteps of Brillat-Savarin’s “gastronomic test tube,” I explored the contents of these transforming bins. Not so much in decomposition as in recomposition.
Through the action of microorganisms, food becomes a site of invisible activity, giving rise to a second life.
During my residency at the Institut Pasteur de Tunisie, I worked with specialists to understand the mechanisms behind food degradation and observe their microscopic manifestations. I created a series of photographs revealing the discreet forms of life that emerge once food leaves our refrigerators, cupboards, and plates.
Breakfast leftovers, ricotta, aubergine, bread, cheese, yoghurt, egg…
From certain angles, I felt these images evoked planets within a solar system. This analogy fascinated me: bringing the very small into relation with the very large, playing with the continuity of scales, imagining that the infinitely small might contain an image of the infinitely large.
This research extends an earlier experiment I conducted in 2010, in my bedroom, and in a somewhat wild and improvised way, around the process of moulding.
At the time, I placed the components of a lemon tart — my favourite dessert then — under glass domes and observed their transformation over several weeks.
As I discovered the emerging textures, filaments, and unexpected forms, I felt as though I were exploring an unknown territory. A rich landscape, an island yet to be discovered.
A space open to fiction, projection, and reverie.
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