Napa, CA
November 18, 2001 - April 22, 2002

COPIA's inaugural contemporary art exhibition is a provocative selection of interactive projects and installations by seven artists. Exhibiting together for the first time, the participating artists come from diverse backgrounds and nations to produce site-specific artworks for COPIA. United thematically, the exhibition's sculptures and installations address the varying rituals of food preparation and consumption in cultures around the globe. Active Ingredients represents a cross-section of contemporary art practices and examines how a selection of cutting-edge artists use food in their work to address aesthetic, social, and political concerns. The artists in the exhibition are: The Art Guys, Lee Mingwei, Miralda, Lucy Orta, Gay Outlaw, Jorge Pardo and Andrea Zittel.

Walking through the new temporary exhibition space of the American Center for Wine Food and the Arts, visitors find a series of display cases containing an intriguing collection of objects and artifacts from popular, modest, culinary culture. All of these items are drawn from the collections of the Food Culture Museum, an extended collecting initiative.

Miralda has worked with food in its aesthetic and ritual extensions for more than three decades. Beyond numerous projects in the streets and in public spaces, he has developed a collection of “food culture” objects found and purchased in his travels. Parts of this collection were initially shown in a specially designed table inspired in the mathematical sign of infinity and including large vitrines as well as functional components for cooking demonstrations. The Infinity Table was developed for the Nutrition Pavilion of EXPO 2000 with ARRA Montreal. The collection is constantly growing and expanding.

Thematically grouped for this exhibition, the displayed items explore symbolic and metaphoric aspects of the preparation, presentation and consumption of food. The topics include: Ciclo, Modest, Loa, Masai, Roles, Lingua, Einmannpackung, Plumbing, Gothic, Poetical Gut, Bestiarius.

This project showcases an extended exploration of culinary culture in contemporary global society. It invites traditional museum audiences to expand their perceptions about contemporary artistic expression. Sign of Good Taste proposes a poetic re-positioning of objects and images as carriers of cultural messages, as instruments in an extended discourse: food for thought and cultural understanding. Food for dreaming. Food for feeling. Food for connecting.