Ingrediente pentru un tort de miere, cu dragoste

In search of the mother tongue, I got lost, following a honey (or apple?) cake. Trying to shorten the distance I find misunderstandings and communication difficulties, but it is resolved with sweetness and irony, around a kitchen table, with a wrong cake.

A plastic tablecloth becomes a symbolic bridge, guiding the artist through a fragmented journey along her family tree, marked by linguistic and generational mismatches.

The clutter of photographs reveals a linguistic misunderstanding: within her mother’s photographic archive, the artist discovers what she imagines—or wishes—to be a youthful love letter addressed to her father. Written in a language that, though maternal, was never passed down to her, the letter turns out to be a small collection of recipes.

This unexpected discovery becomes the catalyst for the artist to reconnect with her aunts in Romania after years of separation. Together, in a space filled with mutual incomprehension, they cook a cake—once again, an object of ambiguity. What was meant to be a honey cake, through haste or emotion, becomes an apple pie.

The project explores the alienating yet persistent connection to a fragmented family identity, reflecting on language as both a barrier and a bridge. The mother tongue, absent and untransmitted, becomes a subject of cultural and identity reclamation. The artist reclaims fragments of her heritage through gestures and rituals—cooking, archiving, and storytelling— seeking to reestablish connections interrupted over time.

This reconnection and dialogue are symbolically recreated through the table itself, a physical and metaphorical meeting place. The table becomes a space where distances are shortened, and where language, food, and gestures serve as tools to rebuild a dialogue with both the past and the present.

Language, in this context, takes on a central role: a bridge that connects past and present, individual and community. The project thus transforms misunderstanding into an opportunity for rediscovery, where the reclamation of language becomes a tool to renew and redefine identity ties.

Project realized with Jest (Torino) and recently selected for Luigi Ghirri Prize, Giovane Fotografia Italiana at Fotografia europea.