Food dal Cucchiaio al Mondo | MAXXI | Rome 29 may 2015 - 8 november 2015
In the year of EXPO in Milan, the exhibition Food is intended as an exploration of architectural issues associated with the storing, distribution, consumption and disposal of food and raw materials, stimulating debate over the primary question of the space and the time we inhabit.
Family Meals, photographic exposition by Chris Terry, 2015
The exhibition, curated by Pippo Ciorra with the support of MAXXI Architettura and MAXXI Arte, depicts the cross-relationships between food and society as well as the physical and conceptual transformation of the urban and domestic spaces where we all live in. Over 50 works by artists, photographers, designers and architects are on display to describe how the various aspects related to human feeding – from production to storing, from distribution to consumption rituals, from disposal to waste – are key-points in today’s design strategies.
Greenhouses, Almeria, Spain, 2015
“With this exhibition MAXXI takes on the task of deeply exploring and manifesting the contradictions connected to the space of food, the blessings and curses, the glamour and misery of humanity,” says Pippo Ciorra, curator of the exhibition. “We attempt to do this by comparing, without filters, the many visions of the world and the space of food, which accompany a theme that merges profit, style and luxury with questions of global ethics, planetary biopolitics, social and human emergencies that leave us gasping for breath. What we are presenting is not an exhibition about food, nor is it an overview of how food has ‘inspired’ architects and artists; rather, our focus is to explore that vast area in which food and design – architectural, urban, artistic – join together to contribute to defining the physical and conceptual space in which we live.”
"Food, Dal Cucchiaio al Mondo" - view of the exhibition, MAXXI, Rome, 2015 - photo by Musacchio Ianniello
"Food dal Cucchiaio al Mondo" tells of visions, traditions and different experiences, presenting architectural projects, stories and works of art. Visitors roam from the Chashitsu, the room where the Japanese tea ceremony is prepared, to images of the famous Pig Roast performance in New York in 1971 by Gordon Matta-Clark, from designs by Le Corbusier, Frank Lloyd Wright and Ignazio Gardella, to the surreal installation of the Giant Mushroom by Carsten Holler, from the food of astronauts, to the first modern kitchen designed in 1926 in Frankfurt, to the hyper-contemporary one designed by Snøhetta for American chef Thomas Keller. Also on display is Van Bergen Kolpa Architecten‘s farm of the future, the video Alphabet by the artist Mohamed Allam, and an ad hocperformance for the exhibition by the Chinese artists called Yangjiang Group.
Market Hall, MVRDV, Rotterdam, Holland, 2014
The exhibition is divided into six sections: starting from the body and - by way of the house, the street, the city, the landscape - arriving at the world, that is, the major issues of geopolitics and the world’s layout for the production/distribution of food.