Daily Bread

Daily Bread takes its lead from systems of clientelism and corruption within societies. It makes reference to bread and salt as indispensable parts of life, but also refers to the double-meaning of dough in terms of money and the value of salt in history. Daily Bread is an exhibition of work by Letta Shtohryn and Margerita Pulè at historic windmill in Birkirkara, run by the Gabriel Caruana Foundation, The Mill. Both artists will use an interdisciplinary approach, working in digital media, installation, sculpture and performance. Letta Shtohryn’s work is a spatial algorithmic-suggestions-trail starting with bread, and leading to salt, ritual and politics. It’s a plateau of semi-connected meanings and associations, sprouting to various directions. Her new work looks at metaphorical connotations with daily bread as well as at the ‘thing itself’; bread as a catalyst of revolutions and bread as a tool for political rituals. The trail starts with the daily bread of internet giants, routinely data mining markers of our mental state, political preferences and position in society to distribute ads to us, simplifying our complex lives by categorisation. Can the algorithm be the ones to know whether a politician is corrupt by offering frequent flyer discounts to Panama? www.lettashtohryn.xyz Margerita Pulè’s work refers to the secrecy which encircles corruption, the implicit class systems that exist within society and how bribery, behaviours and prejudices can influence everyday transactions. Her installation asks audiences to participate, to place a (secret) value on the price of their bread, and possibly allow themselves to be valued in the process. Each transaction – the audience member’s proposal and the artist’s subsequent assessment - reflects how perceptions are formed, how societies rate an individuals’ status, and how more secretive, clandestine deals are formed. The work plays on bread’s centrality in human civilisation; a lack of it can lead to revolution, but a surplus can serve to pacify populations. Photos: Elisa von Brockdorff