Dead or Alive

Dead or Alive

This work consists of moldy bread, a label of bread, and a white texture that is especially used for covering the dead body. White texture and the forms that resemble to the coffin are the elements that I used in a series of works. They can be viewed as objects that represent a process. In this work, I separated the moldy bread into forty colors and shaped each of the groups of moldy bread in the form of a small coffin. Bread is fundamental for nutrition in many societies. Its process of production entails sun, earth, water, and air.
Forty different colored small coffins were placed on white texture in eight rows, each row having five coffins and starting with the lightest color and ending with the darkest one. These colors show a continuous process of change. In Islam, the number of forty is believed to refer to the forty-day long duration of the dissolving of a body into soil or ground. The reason that I came with this idea is the result of the way I used to separate the bread into its colors because with the help of rolling pin I depleted or deformed the bread so much. On each coffin, there was a bread label, a proof of its existence. Moldy bread installed on white texture in the form of a coffin seems to be a representation of death, but it is indeed a living organism that continuously transforms itself.