For What I Could Die

I bring bread home in my suitcase. Lithuanian dark rye sourdough, still the best taste I know. When I cannot travel, someone else carries it for me.

Bread and salt are the closest I get to a home that can be kept in the body. Not symbols. Things with a taste.

The work is four panels. Lithuanian salt and Lithuanian black rye bread on two of them, Norwegian sea salt and kneippbrød, the everyday Norwegian loaf, on the other two. The salt of my childhood was coarse and melted slowly on the tongue. The Norwegian materials are quieter, easy to buy on any corner.

I was born in Lithuania and belonged through ius sanguinis, the right of blood. I became Norwegian through ius domicilii, the right of residence. The law does not allow both.

This is not nostalgia. Taste is the part that cannot be replaced, and many people carry their country home in small amounts and eat it slowly.

Four panels, mixed media on wood
Lithuanian salt, Lithuanian black rye bread, Norwegian sea salt, Norwegian everyday bread (kneippbrød)
20 × 20 × 0.6 cm each, 2025
Part of the project Ius Sanguinis / Ius Domicilii
Exhibited at Dikemark Art Biennale, Norway, 2026