Vanitas: Archive of Arrested Decay 

About the Exhibition

How does food not only sustain and nourish us physically, but also culturally?

Vanitas: Archive of Arrested Decay is a durational performance by MELA Studio (Carmel Bar and Michal Evyatar) that unfolds over the course of three days in the museum’s Alan and Rebecca Ross Education Wing. In this delicate dance of decay and conservation, food hardens and shifts, revealing not only its physical substance but a cultural imprint—an unspoken testament of agricultural landscapes, human touch, and collective memory. Mummification becomes a futile attempt to arrest the inevitable, with each preserved specimen testifying to our human desire to resist impermanence.  

Participatory in nature, Vanitas invites visitors to contribute to the growing archive by bringing with them a food item to be preserved. How is food connected to personal and collective memory? Through this work, the museum becomes a temple of preservation, extending its sacred duty to safeguard not just artifacts, but culinary heritage. Viewers witness the ephemeral journey of sustenance: from raw potential to momentary form, then dissolving, leaving behind only memory and meaning. 

Interested in contributing to the archive? Members of the public are invited to bring food items to the museum on Friday, April 25, from 1–4pm. We invite you to bring food you love from the home you grew up in, that has the flavors and smells of home. Please note that food items cannot be returned once donated to the project.  

Vanitas: Archive of Arrested Decay is organized by the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum at Michigan State University and curated by Steven L. Bridges, Interim Director & Senior Curator and Director of Curatorial Affairs. Support for this exhibition is provided by the Elizabeth Halsted Fund for Kresge Art Museum, the Serling Institute for Jewish Studies and Modern Israel, and the Department of Theatre, College of Arts and Letters, MSU.