Hand-carved gingerbread
model: Wood, 20x30cm.
Design: Beatrice Schuett Moumdjian. Drawing: Lars Preisser.
Execution in wood: Danuta Sroka.
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Broken Mother.
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Ritual breads and gata cakes with motifs. Hand, container ships with wheat, the Cyrillic letter b, the Japanese chrysanthemum and the West Asian sun symbol, knots that bring good luck.
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Portrait of Eprad, grandfather.
Died in plane that crashed on an empty field near Nuremberg in 1961. He departed as a member of the military from Prague and was supposed to land in Bamako. There is a funeral held in his home country in Sofia. Only stones are placed in the coffin that is buried. Eprad’s daughter, Viktoria, Beatrice’s mother, is 6 years old. Eprad’s mother, also called Viktoria, believes until her death that he had survived the crash. A newspaper article from 2021 states that the identities of two of the dead were prohibited from being disclosed.
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Three salt customs from the East: placing salt heaps (“Salzhäufchen setzen”) in the Ore Mountains (custom at New Year - all family members set a salt heap at the turn of the year, which collapses, its owner meets with misfortune); Morijio, salt towers, which people in Japan put on their front door and in front of their store to keep away evil spirits; bread and salt in Bulgaria as a welcome gesture to attract good luck.
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Gingerbread modeled after an Orthodox icon.
The icon is a substitute for the relic in the Orthodox Eastern Church, while bread represents the body of Christ in the Western Church and acts as a substitute for relics. My non-religiously motivated invention of an edible icon combines both.
Depicted is Saint Gregoroire of Nicopolis, the ancient city in former Armenia, now the city of Koyulhisar in Turkey. The saint, also called Gregoire Makar or Gregoire d’Armenie in France, arrived on a pilgrimage in Bondaroy near Pithiviers in 992, where he lived as a hermit in a cave and performed miracles there until he died in 999. According to some sources, he baked gingerbread with West Asian spices from his homecountry, rye flour and honey. If this is true, these would have been the first gingerbreads in Europe.
Here I use Gregoire as an ambassador for Int. Bun, my project International Bun, a concept for a global, utopian, post-colonial restaurant chain.
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Portraits of Eprad, born in Sofia, died near Nuremberg in 1961; Beatrice, 1934-2022, born in Varna, married in Sofia, buried in Varna; Krikor, 1907-1980, fled Ottoman Empire from genocide as a ten year old, died in Varna; Viktoria, fled Ottoman Empire as a young teenager with future husband Sarkis who is adopted by her family; Sarkis sees his in-laws slaughtered; died in Sofia. Marie, great-grand aunt, died in a deportation or extermination camp filled with minorities who were herded through the desert until they were dead. Uncle Karen writes, “Marie was very young, she was hungry and dug up a turnip in the ground, a Turkish soldier took it from her hand and beat her to death with it.” Officers of the German Empire, ally to the Ottoman Empire, helped to answer the Armenian Question.
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Eprad.
DEUTSCH
Mit-inspiriert von der Stadt Ulm, welche, an der Donau liegend, historische Verbindungen mit Osteuropa und West Asien aufweist, habe ich auf Grundlage verschiedener slawischer, mitteleuropäischer und westasiatischer Rezepte für Opfer- und Gebildbrote Gebäckstücke kreiert und familienbiographisch interpretiert. Die Porträtierten sind meine größtenteils toten Verwandten, die in einer Art therapeutischem esoterischem Psychodrama (“Familienaufstellung”) noch während ihrer Herstellung von mir mit positiven Emotionen und dem Wunsch der retroaktiven Heilung durchdrungen (durchknetet) wurden.
Eines der Rezepte ist dem “Weckmann”, “Stutenkerl” oder “Klausenmann” entlehnt, einem zum Figürchen geformten Hefeteig, der seit Jahrhunderten an verschiedenen Orten zu jeweils unterschiedlichen Anlässen im Laufe des Jahres hergestellt wird. Ein weiteres Rezept beruht auf Gata, einem einfachen runden armenischen Brot, das in verschiedenen Größen hergestellt wird, ein wenig wie französische Galette schmeckt und manchmal mit Glück- oder Segenswünschen verziert wird. Auch Teig für bulgarische Osterbrote habe ich hergestellt, und als Personen gestaltet.
Neben orthodoxen Kerzen sind auch die Symbole, die ich für die Verzierung der Personen gewählt habe, alt und doch auch neu kodiert. Symbole wie das Ewigkeitsrad, Fruchtbarkeitssymbole, oder die Brezelform, tauchen auf dem gesamten euro-asiatischen Kontinent in unterschiedlichen Varianten auf, und verweisen mehr oder weniger auf die gleichen Bedeutungen.
Für eine zweite Arbeit habe ich eine Lebkuchenform entworfen und von Hand schnitzen lassen, damit Lebkuchen gebacken, und die Resultate fotografiert. In meiner Arbeit beschäftige ich mich oft mit dem Blick auf den Osten, beeinflusst durch meinen eigenen biografischen Hintergrund, und plädiere dafür, politische und soziale historische Prozesse durch künstlerische Forschung zu untersuchen und nachzuerzählen.
Mehr zu der Arbeit in der Ausstellung Restoring from a Void
Verwandte Arbeit: Gingerbread Orthodox Icon
ENGLISH
Inspired by the city of Ulm, which lies on the Danube river and has historical connections with Eastern Europe, I created pastries based on various Slavic, middle European and West Asian recipes for sacrificial and symbol breads and interpreted them biographically. The portraits are intended to represent my relatives in a kind of therapeutic esoteric psychodrama (“family constellation”).
One of the recipes is based on the “Weckmann”, “Stutenkerl” or “Klausenmann”, a yeast dough shaped into a little figure that has been made for centuries in different towns and villages on different occasions throughout the year. Another recipe is based on gata, a simple round Armenian bread that is made in different sizes, tastes a bit like a French galette and is sometimes decorated with wishes for good luck or blessings. I also made dough for Bulgarian Easter breads and used it to create people from it.
Besides Orthodox candles, the symbols I chose to decorate the breads are old and yet also newly coded. Symbols such as the eternity wheel, fertility symbols, or the pretzel shape, appear in different variations throughout the Asian continent, and refer more or less to the same meanings.
For a second work, I designed and hand-carved a gingerbread mold, baked gingerbread with it, and photographed the results. In my work, I often deal with the view of the East, influenced by my own biographical background, and advocate investigating and retelling political and social historical processes through artistic research.
Weitere Arbeit: Lebkuchen Orthodoxe Ikone
Exhibitions
2022 Kunstsaaten. Museum Brot und Kunst. Ulm, DE
.Compare also this work and that work for reference
.Screencaptured article linked here
.Comprehensive articleby czech researcher Tereza Sirova