On the occasion of the second chapter of the Fondazione Baruchello’s project Terra (Terra come Storia), the exhibition Performing the Ritual: Sant Stomak (curated by Giulietta Speranza and Carla Subrizi) opens on March 26 at 6:00 pm, with a conversation between the artist Miralda, Francesco Careri and Carla Subrizi, moderated by Giulietta Speranza.
The project addresses one of the central themes of Miralda’s research since the 1960s: food as culture and as both personal and collective identity, a device capable of building communities, imaginaries and stereotypes. The exhibition coincides with the performance/action STMK TRIP that the artist will begin at dawn on March 28, launching the Roman stage of the Sant Stomak procession: a route around the Grande Raccordo Anulare and then across Rome, in a ‹‹transurbance›› (F. Careri) that invites us to rethink the way we inhabit and understand the city through a playful and metaphorical approach.
The Sant Stomak project – of which preparatory drawings and compositional elements are presented in the exhibition – was conceived in 2008 as a collective celebration by Miralda and the chef Montse Guillén. It emerged from the idea of creating a collective act of reflection on the universal connections that unite cultures through food, memory and ritual. Since 2015, when a wooden reliquary covered in gold leaf embodying the figure of the saint was created in collaboration with architects Flores&Prats, Sant Stomak has been installed and celebrated in several cities and institutions.
Since 1996, with the project FoodCultureMuseum (later developed into the Fundación FoodCultura) Miralda has explored not only a different way of conceiving the museum beyond the ‹‹opaque, impenetrable, hierarchical archetypes of museography›› (A. Miralda), but also a way of rethinking the idea of “heritage” by creating an archive of the world’s culinary cultures. This archive is continuously reactivated through the participation of different publics and the formation of communities.
Food thus becomes the starting point for a broader reflection that the exhibition seeks to explore by investigating nourishment as a historical and political product. Through a display unfolding across the spaces of the Fondazione Baruchello – with photographs, drawings, objects and notes – the exhibition reveals its multiple implications. While nourishment is essential for survival, eating – what we eat, what we like or dislike, tastes and their classifications, the choice of certain foods and the fashions that shape these choices, culinary exoticism, and colonialism through food – emerges as a political act or as the consequence of economic and market powers and strategies.
The exhibition also offers an opportunity to explore this project in relation to other works by Miralda, including the video Brainfood (2014), which documents the growth of a skull-shaped sculpture made from Porotos Señorita, a Chilean variety of beans that has nourished cultures across Latin America and the Caribbean for centuries and holds an important place in the mythologies of pre-Columbian societies. Another work, Food Situation for a Patriotic Banquet, conceived in 1972 through a series of drawings, photographs and notes and realized in 2010 as an installation, uses rice, one of the world’s most widespread staple foods, as a lens through which to read the global postcolonial condition.
These works enter into dialogue with objects, projects and films by Gianfranco Baruchello, including Costretto a scomparire (1968), which construct a repertoire of gestures, imaginaries and symbols used as tools to critique consumer society and its systems of production.
Antoni Miralda
Miralda (Terrassa, 1942) has developed collaborative art projects and interventions in public space since the 1960s, rooted in sociocultural contexts and marked by a strong anthropological interest in food culture and ritual. In Paris he founded the duo Traiteurs Coloristes with Dorothée Selz, producing actions that explore the ritual and symbolic dimensions of food consumption.
Since 1971 he has lived in New York, where he initiated participatory projects focused on food culture, agriculture, and food production processes. Among his best-known works are Movable Feast (1974), Fest für Leda (Documenta 6, Kassel, 1977), Wheat & Steak (1981), and Santa Comida (1984–1989). One of his most significant projects is Honeymoon Project (1986–1992), a symbolic marriage between the Columbus Monument in Barcelona and the Statue of Liberty, presented at the Spanish Pavilion of the 44th Venice Biennale (1990).
In 2018 he received the Velázquez Prize for the Arts. More recent works include The Last Ingredients (2016) and La Formigonera del PobleNew (2022), public and participatory projects that reflect on culinary culture and urban transformations.
Performing the Ritual: Sant Stomak
26.03–26.04.2026
Curated by Giulietta Speranza and Carla Subrizi
A publication is planned to be published by Arbor Editions at the end of the project.
Coordination: Marcella DalilaMuraca, Anissia Libera Fontana (FoodCultura)
Visual Identity: Edoardo Visalli
Photography: Alessia Calzecchi
The Project was made possible with the support of the Institut Ramon Llull.
Special thanks to FoodCultura and the Real Academia de España for their collaboration in the realization of the exhibition.
