Expanding the Definition

After attending Harvard University, she turned towards another passion of hers – food – and was trained as a chef at the Culinary Institute of America. “I never had the intention to be a chef,” she says, “I just wanted to know how to butcher a cow or how to make a hollandaise sauce. To me it is very important to have a total mastery of the material so that I have a understanding of it in every possible way; intellectually, conceptually but also physically.” So instead of cooking, Jennifer Rubell began to write about food. For 15 years she had columns in the Miami Herald and Domino Magazine until she dared to pursue art.

“I was interested in food and I was interested in art. There’s no place in the food world that you can really engage with food in the fundamentally conceptual way that I am interested in. It was only because of some artists like Rirkrit Tiravanija, Felix Gonzales-Torres and Gordon Matta-Clark that came before me that I found that possibility,” she says about the forerunners in her field. “There were these tendencies of food inside of art but they were very slight and in most artists’ practices it was only one small part. Still those artists definitely made it possible for me to think of food possibly existing inside of art. ”

Today, Jennifer Rubell found her respected place in art. Her pieces are often staggering in scale and sensually arresting, frequently employing food and drink as media: one ton of ribs with honey dripping on them from the ceiling; 2,000 hard-boiled eggs with a pile of latex gloves nearby to pick them up; 1,521 doughnuts hanging on a free-standing wall; a room-sized cell padded with 1,800 cones of pink cotton candy. Visitors of her installations are encouraged to partake in her work, violating the traditional boundaries of art institutions and engaging senses usually forbidden in or absent from museum and gallery contexts.

Since 2001, Jennifer Rubell is responsible for a yearly breakfast project held in the courtyard of the Rubell Family Collection in Miami during Art Basel Miami Beach. In her latest breakfast installation 'Incubation' she explored the creative act while addressing the creation of food, of life and of art. At the opening we sat down with her over a delicious glass of yogurt with honey to talk about her view on the avant-garde.

Find out more about Jennifer Rubell and the Incubation project

Editorial Lead Kitty Bolhoefer / Filming & Photos Fridolin Schöpper / Editing Konterfei / Music BUNNYSTRIPES