Pracownia Działań Przestrzennych
Studio of Spatial Activities

Agnieszka Nowak

1 / 5

Savings

www.nowakowna.com

15.02.2016


The financial crisis led to the accumulation of half of the global wealth in the hands of a small group of 62 people. Despite the economic turbulence that has started in 2010, the wealth of the richest people rose by 44%, while the wealth of the rest of the world dropped by 41% and the poorest population increased its number to around 500 million people. You ask for jobs. If you don't get them, you ask for bread. If you get neither jobs, nor bread, take the bread yourselves. Bread emerged along with the evolution of Homo sapiens, who was then able to harvest grain. It is a symbol of nourishment and prosperity. If it's multiplied then it becomes the synonym of wealth, satiety and satisfaction. Bread is often associated with divine attributes  - Jesus took bread and, when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to his disciples, saying: "Take and eat, this is my body". White bread, mechanically sliced and packed in identical bags is in a way a symbol of our times of globalization. It looks and tastes identically no matter at what latitude it was made. When bread is considered a sculpture material, various possibilities of moulding and shaping it occur. A complex structure developed from similar slices of white bread is characterized by a specific and commonly known smell and undergoes natural processes of aging and decay. Bread being a sculpture material is attributed with a new function of addressing the problem of the mechanism of change of the reality of wealth in relation to social classes. 

Being a complex object, bread possesses no noticeable values for some, while for others it's an object of animal lust. It underwent artistic recycling. The sculpture itself is a 225cm high,180cm long and 150cm wide cube. The proportions and the shape itself refer to the structure of the Kabba, one of Islam's most sacred mosques, thus expanding the issue and placing it beyond our cultural area.