Sacra Fames

(sacred hunger) 2010
Tower Martin Luther Church, Cologne, Germany

Series Triduum Sacrum

This installation is a minimalist imitation of a common living room, in a totally different context, that occupies the floor of the tower of a Lutheran church. The carpet is made out of white flour, in whose center stands a chair, also covered with flour. In the middle of the room is a television, whose screen was destroyed and whose technical elements have been torn from its interior. Later that empty space was filled with typical German buns (Brötchen). Here the community forms a collective body, each family donates a bread.

Everyday things are presented in unusual and contradictory combinations of objects, of meanings, generating tensions: breads as content, in a television that "acts as a furnace", flour that turns into snow, lime, etc. Hunger not only as a physiological phenomenon, but also as an intellectual and spiritual experience. Basically it is a critical questioning of religion, belief and spiritual nutrition.

This installation is part of a large format series named Triduum sacrum which is composed of this installation, the installation Sacra sitis (sacred thirst) where I scattered half the church with flour and covered with a white cloth empty and blood filled cups (with animal blood from the slaughterhouse) that were arranged on the church's altar and the performance Sacer Dolor, (sacred pain) realized on the altar of the church on Good Friday.

The central idea of ​​this visual work are existential experiences of human being: thirst, hunger, pain. Three experiences, which for me are valid as sacred.

Photo-Documentation: Janet Toro
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