Breakfast Pavilion at Venice Biennale

Believing six impossible things before breakfast is Alice in Wonderland’s elixir for keeping a creative and agile mind. All the more so when artists Anna Sophie Berger, Olaf Nicolai and Nicole Wermers are preparing and performing the most important meal of the day.

A curatorial project using food to bridge the divide between art and design, the Breakfast Pavilion at the Venice Art Biennale is presenting three convivial events on May 10, 11 and 12. The A plus A gallery has been converted into a café where creativity is materialised, presented, debated and consumed. Designers from around the world have also contributed objects to be used and sold.

An Austrian artist, Berger has for the past two years been using a whole grain bread recipe of her mothers’ to produce bricks that represent production and decay in her art. She will be making bread on site with her mother to enact a cross-generational transfer, as well as reflect on the globalisation of the art world. “The juxtaposition between a foreign product and Italian food culture seems to adequately mirror the reality of the Venice Biennale as an internationalised transcultural event that is to this day organised around the concept of the national as principle for selection,” she explains.

Wermers will be taking a leaf from her recent book, Architecture and Croissants, that reflects on the relationship between gentrification and pastries. The book interleaves images of croissants photographed in cities across Europe with sandpaper. She will be serving soft-boiled egg topped with a sanded-down croissant!

Finally, Nicolai will be reprising his 2013 exhibition of chocolate busts of Marcel Duchamp. Instead of displaying them in a rotating vitrine, they will be served in warm drinking milk.

The Breakfast Pavillion is curated by Marco Campardo, Lorenzo Mason (M–L–XL) and Luca Lo Pinto, with the special contribution of Maria Jeglinska. Breakfasts are by invite only, but from 12pm to 7pm, the gallery is open to the public.