The Taste of images

And yet we have never ceased to feast on them, from the earliest antiquity to the present day, particularly in Europe and the Mediterranean. So how can we explain such an attitude towards them ? Why incorporate an image, take it into oneself, at the risk of destroying it, rather than observing it quietly from a distance ? What functions can be attributed to these actions, to this very particular experience of images? What does such behaviour reveal about ourselves and our societies ?

The exhibition ‘The Taste of images’ will address these questions by demonstrating that the ingestion of a figurative object makes it possible to harbour within the night of one’s body that which has the power to heal, protect and transform us, but also to offer us the means to learn, to resist, to play, to dream, and to participate in the life of dedicated communities. This exhibition will juxtapose the practice with the diversity of imaginaries (religious, philosophical,
literary, artistic, political) that underpin it, in a journey ranging from the metaphorical embodiment to the actual ingestion of images.

Paintings, wood or stone sculptures, engravings, prints, photographs, fiction and ethnographic films, communion wafers, waffles, figurative cakes and breads, sculpted foods, molds, amulets… 435 works punctuate the exhibition, 250 of which come from the Mucem’s collections; many are usually kept in the cold-storage areas of the museum’s reserves.

The exhibition is organized with the special participation of the Bibliothèque nationale de France, which is lending 42 works

Curatorship

Jérémie Koering, Professor at the University of Fribourg (General Curator)
Raphaël Bories, Curator of the Beliefs and Religions Department at the Mucem (Associate Curator)