Give us this day…

Give us this day…

Galeria Arsenał, Białystok, A. Mickiewicza 2

Curator: Ewa Chacianowska

11.06–25.07.2021 

The project’s aim is to encourage the audience to deeply reflect on the role of food in the modern world and the impact of food production and consumption on the surrounding socio-cultural reality and the natural environment. The exhibition will enable artists to communicate with the audience in an innovative way. Not only will food products serve as a point of departure and a subject, but they will also be the substance of creation, a medium as well as the essence of their artistic expression. We are especially keen to see the kind of artistic initiatives which, by involving the audience, will refresh and intensify our institution’s relationship with the public, changed by the prolonged pandemic situation.

The subject of food is not trivial, neither is it mundane. The title of the exhibition: Give us this day…, emphasizes both the dailiness of eating and its spiritual dimension. Using the language of contemporary art, the artists will “talk” about the micro- and macro-levels of broadly understood food policies, about the connection between food and everyday life, and about the impact of the methods of food production aa well as nutrition on humans and their environment. Are the so-called “healthy eating”, vegetarianism or veganism mere fads imposed on us by idols, celebrities, trendsetters and food producers, or are they a conscious escape from the corollaries of the global food industry? Could these choices result from a mature ethical attitude towards all the creatures inhabiting our planet? Do we create a lifestyle and individualism by eating “healthy”? Does it give us a sense of agency? Or, as claimed by the German philosopher Ludwig Feuerbach, who proposes that eating affirms the materiality of human beings, ”you are what you eat”?  

We want the project to merge tradition and modernity. Can we even begin to discuss cuisine and food without considering tradition? A series of carefully chosen events accompanying the project will draw attention to the diversity of food culture and show that the various methods of food preparation develop from both the origin of the ingredients and the cultural background of the people preparing the food.

The pandemic has raised the question whether watching cooking in the virtual space, lacking the possibility of tasting or even smelling the food, affects what and how we eat and influences our interpersonal relationships. Since the first lockdown, social media has been swamped with recipes: made, displayed and shared online by multitudes of people. How can we relate this contemporary phenomenon to the tradition of holding feasts, which has for centuries helped people forge and maintain interpersonal bonds?

This and many other questions will be addressed by artists who have already practiced the „food theme” in their art. We will show mainly new works, created especially for the exhibition by recognized artists such as: inter alia, Elżbieta Jabłońska, Anna Królikiewicz, Paweł Matyszewski, Małgorzata Niedzielko, Dorota Podlaska, Sergey Shabohin as well as by the artists of the young generation: Adelina Cimochowicz, Karolina Konopka, Tomasz Kręcicki and Ala Savashevich. We will also display works of foreign artists: Albert de Braud, as well as works selected from the Collection II of the Arsenał Gallery in Białystok.

We hope that when the exhibition opens the state of the pandemic will allow for larger groups of people to meet, sit together at the table, feast, discuss cuisine and contemporary art, and live the idea of community. We will try and turn discussions and meetings with professional chefs, culinary experts, bloggers and, of course, artists, into a great feast for the soul and the body, where we will be together again, addressing matters of social importance and enjoying the good tastes of art and food.