Hand-carved gingerbread
model: Wood, 20x30cm.
Design: Beatrice Schuett Moumdjian. Drawing: Lars Preisser.
Execution in wood: Danuta Sroka.
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Family constellation/séance. Portraits of relatives as “Stutenkerle”, a German type of person shaped bread, and ritual breads, decorated with eternity symbols, fertility symbols, sun wheels, immortality knots from Eastern and Western Europe and East and West Asia. Long-stemmed candles from the Orthodox Church, which in Bulgaria incorporates everyday mystical, and Slavic elements.
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Broken Mother.
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Portrait of Eprad, grandfather.
Died in the plane that crashed in 1961 over Oberrüsselbach near Nuremberg, in which he was a foreign military member. There is a funeral in his homeland in Sofia, where only stones are buried in the coffin. Eprad's daughter, Viktoria, Beatrice's mother, is 5 years old. Eprad's mother, also named Viktoria, believes until her death that he survived the crash. A 2021 newspaper article states that the identities of two of the dead were not allowed to be revealed for political reasons.
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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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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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Eprad.
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Portraits of Eprad, born in Sofia, died near Nuremberg in 1961; Beatrice, 1934-2022, born in Varna, buried in Sofia or Varna; Krikor, 1907-1980, fled Ottoman Empire from genocide, died in Varna; Viktoria, fled Ottoman Empire from genocide with husband; she sees her in-laws beheaded; died in Sofia.
Marie, great-grand aunt, died in a deportation or extermination camp filled with minorities who were herded through the desert every day until all 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, which was an ally of the Ottoman Empire, helped to implement the Armenian Question.
DEUTSCH
Ausgehend von bulgarischen, deutschen und armenischen Rezepten habe ich Gebäck kreiert, das meine Verwandten in einer Familienaufstellung, einer Art therapeutischem Psychodrama, zeigt und fotografisch porträtiert. Dabei interpretiere und entwickele ich Opfer- und Ritualbrote, Symbole und Traditionen aus Ost- und Westasien, dem Balkan und Westeuropa. Neue Opfer, alte Wunden, Mystik, Gata-Kuchen, Geheimnisse, Salz und Weckmann tauchen darin auf. In einer weiteren Arbeit habe ich ein Lebkuchenmodel auf der Grundlage einer orthodoxen Heiligenikone herstellen lassen. Sie zeigt einen heiliggesprochenen westasiatischen Eremiten, der bereits 992 in Frankreich Lebkuchen gebacken haben soll. Ich habe ihn zum Botschafter meiner fiktiven postkolonialen Restaurantkette “International Bun” ernannt. 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.
ENGLISH
Based on Bulgarian, German and Armenian recipes, I have created pastries that show my relatives in a Family Constellation, a kind of therapeutic Psychodrama (“Familienaufstellung”), and portrayed them photographically. In doing so, I am interpreting and developing sacrificial and ritual bread , symbols and traditions from East and West Asia to the Balkans and Western Europe. New sacrifices, old wounds, mysticism, Gata cake, secrets, salt and Weckmann(German type of shaped bread) appear. In another work, I have had a gingerbread mold made based on an Orthodox saint’s icon. It shows a canonized West Asian hermit who is said to have baked gingerbread in France as early as 992. I have appointed him as ambassador of my fictional post-colonial restaurant chain “International Bun”. In my work I often deal with the view towards the East, influenced by my own biographical background, and plead for investigating and retelling political and social historical processes through artistic research.