Antoni Miralda

(Terrasa, 1943)

Food poetics is the field of exploration for Antoni Miralda. Food and the act of eating as a cultural event delve into the concept of ritual and celebration, with a playful and participatory approach that highlights the political and critical nature of his work. In his projects, he favors public and participatory formats, involving everyone from scientists to shamans. Foodcultura is a platform that emerged from Expo 2000 in Hanover, where he created the Food Pavilion, a pavilion dedicated to food through the connections between science, ritual, technology, art, and tradition. For the exhibition, he presented The Infinity Table, an infinity-shaped table-display case measuring more than 50 meters in perimeter, with 25 glass cases displaying more than 1,600 food-related objects. The concept of FoodCultura explores questions about human identities, their universal rituals, their relationship with indigenous memory, their fusion processes, their preservation and cohesion strategies, their vehicles for transmitting or subverting traditions, and their contemporary social practices. It's the project Miralda has been developing ever since, which morphs into different formats depending on the context. These include "Flavors and Languages" (1997–2014) and "FoodCultura Satélite Boquería" (2014–2018). The former, presented at MACBA in 2013, revolved around the preservation of local culinary traditions from different parts of the world and the codification of a poetic memory about the ways of food.

For Banquete_03, Metabolism and Communication, she carried out an action that delved into the primary food, bread as a carrier of messages, and the tongue as an organ of taste and a system of communication between cultures. It consisted of introducing printed messages on paper—received from all over the world and written in multiple languages—into the dough of the breads baked daily in two ovens installed in the courtyard of the CCCD, for distribution to various establishments in the city of Madrid.