Antoni Muntadas

Antoni Muntadas was born in Barcelona in 1942. Since 1971, he has lived and worked in New York. He is an artist and researcher, known for his multidisciplinary work exploring themes of communication, media, politics and society.

Between 1977 and 1984, he was a researcher at the Center for Advanced Visual Studies at MIT and has taught at numerous universities in Europe and the United States, including the National School of Fine Arts in Paris, the University of Buenos Aires, the University of California in San Diego and Cooper Union in New York. He was also a Visiting Professor at MIT in Cambridge and at the Iuav University of Venice.

He exhibited his work in Documenta VI (1977), the Whitney Biennial of American Art (1991), Documenta X (1997) and the 51st Venice Biennale (2005). In 2011, the Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid dedicated a significant retrospective to him, “Entre/Between”, tracing his work from the 1970s to the present. The exhibition was later presented in Paris at the Jeu de Paume in 2012.

He received grants from the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation, as well as prizes from Ars Electronica in Linz, the Laser d’Or in Locarno and the Premio Nacional de Artes Plásticas in 2005. The most recent is the “Premio Velázquez de las Artes Plásticas” (2009), awarded by the Spanish Ministry of Culture.

Muntadas is known for his innovative use of media and new media, which he employs as tools for critical reflection on social and political mechanisms. His interdisciplinary approach encompasses photography, video, installations, publications and urban interventions. Muntadas emphasises how the emergence of new media generates many expectations and creative possibilities, but over time, the mechanisms of industry, politics and the economic system tend to modify, reduce or even suppress these initial expectations.

For Muntadas, art is a mix of perception and information: perception impacts us emotionally, while information connects us to the contemporary world we live in.