Design has the incredible ability to inquire nearly any aspect of human life. From communications to transportation, from health to sports, from housing to everyday life and its habits. Yet, when it is shown to the public in museums and galleries it somehow remains abstract and disconnected from its daily functions. A show on display in Tbilisi, Georgia, eloquently integrates design and its material artefacts in a broader narrative about our everyday life, our national identities and the symbolic meaning each object carries.
Titled “What’s for breakfast?”, this show intends to inquire into eastern-European habits and way of life through the lens of design. The idea that guided the creation of this exhibition was to create a global discussion about the ways of life in different countries by merging design objects with their precise function. Hence, the question that forms the title has also guided the creation of different settings: each table represents a country through a meticulous display of its morning habits. “What’s for breakfast?”, presents a starting point from which the representatives of each country involved (namely Austria, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland, Hungary and Georgia), responded with a selection of objects, materials, settings, dishes and, ultimately, habits, that subtly speak about their national identities, qualities, affinities and preferences.
From the severe Austrian breakfast to the open Georgian feast, each table not only pinpoints the different customs, but also demonstrates how design can effectively penetrate each aspect of our lives, form the most simple and trivial ones, like a breakfast, to complex and articulate issues of national identity and shared culture.
Curated by Anna Pietrzyk-Simone, Kasia Jeżowska, and Miśka Miller-Lovegrove, “What’s for breakfast?” is on display until the 3rd of July at Writers’ House of Georgia in Tbilisi, Georgia.
