Antoni Miralda
Antoni Miralda was born in Terrassa (Barcelona) in 1942. After spending two years in Paris and two in London, in 1966 he settled in the French capital until 1972, when he moved to New York. He currently lives between Miami and Barcelona. In the sixties, with the so-called ‘Paris Catalans’ (Joan Rabascall, Jaume Xifra, Benet Rossell and Dorothée Selz) he organised a series of happenings or collective rituals around ceremonial food from the perspective of colour and symbolism. Initially in collaboration with Dorothée Selz, and from 1972 with the museum keeper and chef Montse Guillén, he made food the object of his artistic work. Over the years, he has created large installations in a non-conformist language that is lively, baroque and kitsch and which brings art to life. In major works like Honeymoon Project, a symbolic marriage between the statue of Columbus in Barcelona and the Statue of Liberty in New York, he uses a universal activity such as food to carry out a deconstruction of prejudices in a world that is already global. Many of his works promote collective participation in a context of play and partying. His gastronomic ethnology has received widespread international recognition. Since 2000, Miralda has focused on the FoodCulturaMuseum, an archive of multiple projects based on research and reflection around food diversity and its relation to the cultures of the world. Based in Miami and Barcelona, he explores and disseminates food culture through audiovisual material, music, books, furniture and all types of documents.
Events
SIDEBAR welcomes internationally acclaimed Spanish artist Antoni Miralda, and University of Chicago anthropologist Stephan Palmié to the Gray Center Lab for a conversation on the intersection of food, art, and other forms of cultural exchange.