Art Basel Miami: Jennifer Rubell

Photographer Dana Lixenberg documents New York-based artist Jennifer Rubell’s Incubation, a sensational mixture of happening and installation in which the viewer actually eats the artwork. Developed for the yearly breakfast project at the Rubell Family Collection for Art Basel Miami Beach, Incubation offers visitors a morning jar of yogurt made on-site from a lab-born “culture”: inside a fabricated maternity ward of sorts, two nurses oversee the process and pass the results through a slot to spectators, who then hold up their jar to a ceiling pedestal dripping golden local honey for the annunciation moment. Daughter of uber-collectors Don and Mera Rubell, the artist is renowned for investigating the creative process via audience participation. Trained as a chef, her previous works have included a padded cell made of 1,800 cones of pink candyfloss; 1,521 donuts hanging on a free-standing wall; and 2,000 boiled eggs with a pile of latex gloves nearby to pick them up. More recently the artist created a waxwork of Prince William, complete with replica engagement ring for the viewer to slip his or her finger through. Here Rubell speaks to NOWNESS about mornings and rituals.

What do you usually have for breakfast?
I hate breakfast, but I am always hungry in the morning so I eat a salad, or yoghurt with radishes and cucumbers. I like savory food all day long. 

Are you a morning person? 
I am a morning person, it feels like the middle of the day to me; I get up around 6am. 

Who inspires you: Artists or cooks? 
That’s hard! Artists are a tremendous inspiration for the work I do. And the cooks are a tremendous inspiration for the materials. In terms of having people as friends, I enjoy chefs. 

What do you hope to reveal through Incubation?
Well, for me there are a few things going on. I am a mom so the piece came out of thinking about the female artist in general. I was really interested in being able to explore the creation of life in relation to the creation of artwork and of food. Part of it is scientific, part is a miracle; part physical, part metaphysical. Together they form a creative act.

Is there something female about the creative act?
The creative act has always been cast as so male. I think of the film of Jackson Pollock, a man throwing his paint around. This is a proposition of an alternative creative act, the waiting and the receiving; these magical qualities are made explicit here.

Which one contemporary artist would you cook a meal for?
That’s easy! Maurizio Cattalan. I think it would be the most challenging to cook for Maurizio. He is the only artist I can think of off the top of my head where it would not be another stupid bourgeois meal I am cooking. That’s to his credit.