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What is art? What is childhood? What is comfort? These are questions that the
artist seems to be asking in her «Just Right» exhibition at the back of Miami’s Rubell
Family Collection. Rubell creates participatory artwork that features elements
of performance art. Her works are often on a staggering scale that quite literally
arrests the senses. Food and drink are her basic media. Take her installation of 2,000
hard-boiled eggs with a pile of latex gloves nearby to pick them up, for example;
or the 1,521 doughnuts she hung, ready to be eaten, on a free-standing wall at the
Los Angeles Contemporary Museum of Art; or her padded cell «equipped» with
1,800 cones of pink cotton candy; or her ton of ribs with honey dripping on them
from the ceiling. Viewers are encouraged to partake in her creations, transgressing
the traditional boundaries of art institutions where we are taught to stop and hold
back, to view but not to touch.
Rubell, who was born on June 11, 1970, received her Bachelor of Arts Degree
in Art History from Harvard University and subsequently attended the Culinary
Institute of America to learn proper cooking and how to handle food. She wrote
about food in the Miami Herald and Domino magazine and penned a book called
«Real Life Entertaining» before beginning her artistic practice of the essence of
food art. New York can count itself lucky to have such an engaging 40 year-old
single mother with the creativity and perseverance to pursue projects that are
otherwise nowhere to be found within the realm of regular contemporary art. Jennifer
Rubell’s unusual art form may have been ahead of its time. Now, however, it
has definitely arrived!
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