Food as Activism in Contemporary Public Art
Guest Editors: Silvia Bottinelli and Margherita d'Ayala Valva

Food, ranging from dinners to edible gardens, has been incorporated into public art projects since the 1960s. Artists as well as contemporary scholars have analyzed the movement’s historical significance, however, the question of its legacy remains open-ended. During the 1990s food became more consistently linked to relational art and social sculpture. For example, "Culture in Action," a 1992-93 exhibition/community art project curated by Mary Jane Jacob included two important food-centered pieces: Suzanne Lacy’s Full Circle and Haha’s Flood. In such contexts food became an opportunity to address pressing social issues such as gender identity and AIDS. Around the same time other artists also explored certain foods’ exemplification of postcolonial dynamics, while others tracked the ecological impact of food. The aesthetic discourse of food production and consumption as a relational practice can be extended to the realm of social media today. We are interested in receiving articles, interviews, essays, and artists' projects that analyze food art in the public sphere - be it in physical or virtual spaces - in the past four or five decades.

Submissions may explore diverse geographical contexts and power dynamics, look at long-term or temporary projects, and focus on participatory, sculptural or conceptual practices.