Eikõn & Klan
accidents of patros
Accidents of Patros, bread, 40cm, 2020
The breaking of bread was initiated by Christ: ‘This is my body, do this in remembrance of me.’ But rather than being the body of Christ, this bread is baked from a cast of Joseph, the usurped and decidedly human father.
Patros (the bakes)
Fiber-based prints, 60x40cm, 2022
Holy Communion is a divisive theology many still believe to be a literal transformation of matter: in the moment of communion the bread and wine are supposedly changed into the body and blood of Christ. The term then used to describe the seemingly unaltered bread and wine is 'the accidents', meaning that while they preserve their appearance and tangible materiality as bread and wine, this is accidental to the fact that their substance has now become body and blood.
Photography acts here as a type of transubstantiation: the accidents of its subject, while preserved in appearances are yet changed, transformed in the substance that is the image.
Patros (bake 5), 60 x 40cm, 2021
Framed in solid sapele wood with routed face
Patros (as bronze)
‘Patros’ is Ancient Greek for ‘a father’. Cast in bronze the decaying nature of the organic is preserved, along with the exchange of narratives in casting Joseph–rather than Christ–as the body of bread. And if Joseph is to be remembered in this exchange perhaps we might forget instead the central role of Jesus' sacrifice, and along with it the myth of redemptive violence and righteous suffering that has helped legitimise or tolerate all kinds of cruelties in his name ever since.
Patros, bronze, 40 x 15 x 12cm, 2022