Miami, Fla., April 3, 2026 – Oolite Arts is pleased to inaugurate Oolite Arts Conversations, a new public series that convenes artists, curators, museum professionals, and cultural thinkers in rigorous and lively dialogue.

The inaugural event, on May 7, 2026, opens the series with an evening devoted to Antoni Miralda, the Barcelona-born artist whose practice has, since the 1960s, transformed food into a powerful artistic, social, and political medium, thus fully embodying the transdisciplinary, socially-embedded, and internationally-resonant approach to the arts that Oolite Arts Conversations seeks to foreground.

Bringing together art, anthropology, and civic history, the conversation will place Miralda in dialogue with César E. Trasobares—artist, curator, and a key architect of Miami’s public art infrastructure and policy framework—and Stephan Palmié, anthropologist and Norman & Edna Freehling Professor of Anthropology and Social Sciences at the University of Chicago. Together, they will examine Miralda’s singular impact on Miami and beyond, tracing the ways food, ritual, and collective participation has shaped his work and its enduring cultural resonance.

Born in Terrassa, Barcelona, in 1942, Miralda first established his practice in Paris before relocating to New York in 1972, and has since maintained an active presence between Miami and Barcelona. From his early Happenings with the “Paris Catalans”—collective rituals centered on ceremonial food, color, and symbolism—to his large-scale installations and research-driven projects, Miralda’s work unfolds through a vibrant, baroque, and nonconformist language that brings art directly into the social fabric of everyday life.

Miami has been a crucial site in Miralda’s career since 1981, when he was invited as guest artist for the New World Festival of the Arts, with interventions at Coral Castle, Vizcaya, the Bass Museum, and the Lowe Art Museum. In 1992, together with chef and longtime collaborator Montse Guillén, he established a base on Española Way, initiating a sustained period of engagement with the city as a site of experimentation that included Big Fish Mayaimi on the Miami River (1996–1999) and a major exhibition at the Miami Art Museum in 1998. Since 2000, his ongoing FoodCulturaMuseum—anchored in both Miami and Barcelona—has functioned as an evolving archive that examines food diversity as a lens through which to understand cultures across the world.

Among Miralda’s landmark projects is Honeymoon Project (1986/1992), a multi-site international undertaking staging the symbolic marriage between the Statue of Liberty in New York and the Columbus Monument in Barcelona—an incisive deconstruction of Old World/New World relations through ritual, food, and collective celebration. His work has been presented at major international platforms including documenta VI, the 17th São Paulo Biennial, and the 44th Venice Biennale. In 2018, he received Spain’s prestigious Velázquez Prize for Visual Arts. Miralda will be joined by César E. Trasobares, whose career bridges studio practice, cultural policy, and civic infrastructure. As Executive Director of Metro-Dade County’s Art in Public Places Program (1985–1990), Trasobares oversaw landmark commissions by artists including Ed Ruscha, Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen, Nam June Paik, and Betye Saar—projects that helped define Miami’s public art landscape. A longtime collaborator on Miralda’s Miami initiatives, Trasobares brings a deeply informed perspective on the artist’s formative role within the city’s cultural life.

The conversation will also feature Stephan Palmié, whose scholarship on Afro-Caribbean cultures, foodways, slavery, migration, and constructions of race and ethnicity provide a critical framework for understanding the historical and symbolic dimensions of Miralda’s practice. His collaboration with Miralda on Maggi Galaxy—a multidisciplinary project exploring the aesthetics and politics of the Maggi bouillon cube—underscores the rich intersections between artistic production and anthropological inquiry that the evening’s dialogue will bring into focus.

Through their respective practices and perspectives, Miralda, Trasobares, and Palmié will together explore Miami as both laboratory and crossroads, a city where artistic experimentation, cultural translation, and public life converge. In doing so, the event will inaugurate Oolite Arts Conversations by enacting the very values at the heart of the series—a sustained commitment to contemporary art as a critical framework for understanding the social world.

Conceived as a platform for critical exchange, the Oolite Arts Conversations reflects Oolite Arts’ commitment to supporting artists while advancing the knowledge and practice of contemporary visual arts. At once locally grounded and internationally engaged, Oolite Arts Conversations positions Miami as a dynamic hub where artistic discourse is generated, debated, and shared.

WHEN:
May 7: Antoni Miralda in conversation with César Trasobares and Stephan Palmié
Followed by reception and book signing of Maggi Galaxy, which will be available for purchase at the event in collaboration with EXILE Projects

WHERE:
Proscenium Theatre, Little Haiti Cultural Complex
212 NE 59th Terrace, Miami, FL 33137

Hours: 7:00-9:00 p.m.

Admission: Free

Free On-Site Parking

For more information, updates and full series schedule, please visit https://oolitearts.org/oolite-arts-conversations/.

Oolite Arts Media-Only Contacts: Claudia DoCampo, Director of Communications and Marketing, [email protected], (305) 746-2250

Oolite Arts Conversations is organized by Rina Carvajal, Senior Director of Programs at Oolite Arts. It is made possible with the support of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation; the Miami-Dade County Department of Cultural Affairs and the Cultural Affairs Council; the Miami-Dade County Mayor and Board of County Commissioners; the State of Florida, Department of State, Division of Arts and Culture; and the Florida Council on Arts and Culture. Special thanks to FoodCultura; Exile Books; Anissia Libera Fontana; and Konstantia Kontaxis.