ISBN: 978-1-59005-637-0

Hardcover, 6 x 8 1/2, 16 pages, 17 duotone plates, 1 original signed photograph.

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To desire - from the Latin 'desiderare', which means 'without the stars' - implies the idea of lacking guidance and still wanting to move forward. Working for four years (2018-2022) in northern Marseille, Ilaria Turba made communities gather to knead bread, entrusting their wishes to the dough. More than a hundred bread-sculptures emerged inspired by the ancient Mediterranean culture of ritual breads. Since 2022, these "Breads of desire" have traveled across different places in Italy, finally reaching Sardinia, where these ritual traditions are still alive. Here, in 2024 a final collective rite took place: the burning of the breads - not destruction, but transformation. Through fire, the breads finally became fine, shiny black powder, reconnecting with the desires from which it al began. Their journey remains: a constellation of encounters where bread and desire bind us, like the stars.

Ilaria Turba (b. 1978, Italy) is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice develops through collaborations, participatory processes, and workshops engaging communities and territories, often in socially fragile and complex contexts. Her work explores memories, collective imaginaries, and desire as a force for transformation, through photography, video, installations, performances, artist’s books, and public interventions, often in dialogue with public and private archives. Her projects have been presented internationally at institutions and festivals including Mucem, Centre Pompidou, Fondazione Prada, Les Rencontres de la photographie d’Arles, Castello di Rivoli, and MAXXI L'Aquila. Her monograph JEST (Peperoni Books, 2016) was included in the volume How We See: Photobooks by Women by 10x10 Photobooks. From 2018 to 2021 she was associated artist at Le ZEF, Marseille’s national theatre, where she developed Le désir de regarder loin, a project presented at Manifesta 13 and in a solo exhibition at Mucem in 2021, with the support of the Italian Council. Between 2022 and 2025 she developed The Journey of the Breads of Desire, a nomadic project hosted by different organisations and institutions across Italy and concluded with an exhibition at MAN Museum in Nuoro.

Limited to 500 numbered copies, each copy of the book includes a 5x7 inch original print that has been signed by the artist. In collaboration with Micamera.