FAITHFOOD

Faithfood or the ways of the world

Lyon, at the time the capital of Humanism, created one of the first medical architectures.
«There was a genius here in finally providing a setting for patients as such, who were otherwise left to their own devices,» thus integrating them into a community created to provide better care.
Food and cooking were the real weapons against the epidemics of the time. It is the same healthy diet and its pleasures that are advocated today, with a curative and preventive function against contemporary diseases.
In those days, the rare and precious spoon that was given to everyone was the key.
It was this spoon that, throughout history, transformed the use of the hand for eating into the use of a social and plural object, so innumerable are its forms, materials, functions and meanings that it enabled people to situate themselves in society by sharing food in a common dish.
«I therefore chose the spoon as a metaphor for these values, this history and this approach of yesterday, here extended today and which also celebrates the know-how of producers, cooks and the art of the French table.»
There are thirteen of them, all of human size, to celebrate the fact that, at the time, fourteen patients were cured, compared with only one in four in Paris.
The spoons are engraved with profiles, seven of them female, to celebrate the role of the hospitalières in the institution.
Suspended halfway up the dome, they are a reminder both of the help provided by the spiritual elevation of the place, and of the effective suction of miasma by this visionary architecture.
The use of glass as the main material is in harmony with the large volumes of the spaces and with the other craft traditions that presided over the construction of the building. Glass also allows the essential natural light of the small dome to be preserved and played with. It is even accentuated by the play of reflections in the silvered glass. The reflections also create a link with the visitors, whose movements bring the work to life.
The thirteen spoons are arranged in a circle, linking the offering to the divine.

Vincent Breed

Commissioned by the Metropole de Lyon, as part of the creation of the permanent exhibition in the museum area of the Cité Internationale de la Gastronomie in Lyon.

Creation
Vincent Breed