クロノファジーまたは15日目 / Chronophagie or the 15th day

Created on October 1st, 2021 – Villa Kujoyama

Polyptych photography and installation
Photographic prints on glossy acetate paper, various objects

The first fourteen days of my residency in Japan (from August 18th till August 31th) resumed a strict and supervised confinement in my studio at Villa Kujoyama. I took a picture of every evening meal I used to prepare and eat alone. Same framing, same exposure, same decoration of the dark coffee table, the light wooden tray and the white plates (with some variety due to the diversity of the meals). Except for the last meal before the end of confinement, which I had photographed after I finished it, all other meals were immortalized before I started eating. I printed and arranged those dish shots in polyptych, and hung them in two columns of seven pictures, following the chronological order of traditional Japanese writing – from top to bottom and from right to left – as opposite the reading of a European Middle Ages glass window that we read from left to right and from bottom to top.

The more we advance in its deciphering, the closer we get to heaven. Here, heaven was below, on the same dark coffee table leaning against the same wall, just below the polyptych, filled with the same objects and plates on the pictures, set alike. Yet, there were empty blank white pages, waiting for visitors to rewrite them, the ones who were invited to share with me the meal on the 15^th day -the first day of freedom-, which was also my birthday, September 1^st, 2021. Colored pencils and felt-tip pens, multicolored square sheets of origami paper, pens, scissors, small cardboard boxes and paper bags, strings, and writing sheets were used as material for culinary and poetic creation, which encouraged them to fill in the plates dedicated to this first shared meal …