HÉLÈNE BELLENGER
La Devorazione

Iconophagia is an ancestral practice that consists of ingesting images in order to physically assimilate them. This tradition, dating back to Antiquity, involves the consumption of frescoes, icons, sculptures, engravings, printed wafers, heraldic wafers, almond paste representations or sculpted foodstuffs, allowing the person who swallows the image to incorporate sacred power. Traces of this tradition still survive in Sicily: the ‘Supper of Saint Joseph’, celebrated on 19th March, is a rite deeply rooted in local culture, in which communities organise sumptuous banquets.
Hélène Bellenger, winner of the residency at the Orestiadi Foundation for the Open Call 2023, will organise a banquet in Gibellina during the opening, which links tradition and contemporaneity, in collaboration with Damien Caccia.

BIO

Hélène Bellenger (Marseille, 1989) is a French artist and graduate of the National School of Photography in Arles. Her work has been exhibited at the MUCEM – Museum of European and Mediterranean Civilisations in Marseille, Hangar Photo Art Center in Brussels, Suttie Art Space in Scotland, the 3 bis F Art Centre in Aix-en-Provence, Fonderia 20.9 in Verona, etc. He received the Eurazeo Young Photography Prize, the Drac PACA Creation Support, the Dior Prize for Photography and Visual Arts for Young Talents, at the Centre Photographique d’Île-de-France and the Nicephore Niepce Museum.

Damien Caccia (Paris, 1989) is a visual artist graduated at Ecole Supérieure d’Art des Pays Basquees and at Ecole Supérieure d’Beaux-Arts de Nantes. He is co-founder of ‘Grande Surface’, a self-managed art space in Brussels. 

He has participated in numerous exhibitions in France and Belgium, including Galerie Mansart, La Vallée, the Biennale Art Press at MAMC and the PhotoBrussels Festival.

The project is supported by FONDAZIONE NUOVI MECENATI