Projects

bread braids (2026), Aimée Xenou & friends
USA, Italy, Sweden & Germany

bread braids uses Knäckebröd. Knäckebröd uses yeast. Yeast is a live fungus, which is
considered a bioplastic in the current art vernacular. The intersection of yeast bioplastics and
community engagement art represents one of the most cutting-edge domains of socially
engaged BioArt. 

The project bread braids brings together this practice with essential modes of placemaking.
Active placemaking is sustained through people and their practices. This project focuses on
food-making as a practice; on Nordic yeast-based baking. For bread braids, participants use
traditional Nordic fermented thin Knäckebröd rounds with a center hole. These rounds feature
as materials for public photo sessions. 

Seemingly everyday ephemeral objects, the Nordic breads are photographed in a ‘displaced
scenario’ in various places and with various people, thereby creating lasting art that addresses
social practices of place and displacement. bread braids creates an opening to practice critical
history and to discuss notions of ‘fidelity to place’ and the way identities are formed by some
and threatened for others.