Antoni Muntadas (b. 1942, Barcelona; lives and works in New York) is a post-conceptual multimedia artist considered to be one of the pioneers of media and conceptual art in Spain. Through his work with video, the Internet, photography, installation, text, public interventions, and more, Muntadas “has addressed topics such as the changing relationship between the public and the private, the naturalization of the logic of consumerism, the cultural homogenization processes imposed by globalization, the use of architecture as a tool for legitimating political and economic power, the importance of the mass media in the expansion of financial capitalism, the functioning of the artistic ecosystem or the exploitation of the fear of the ‘other’ as a strategy for social control.”[1] Throughout his career, Muntadas has focused on creating work that exposes various aspects of the complex, dark, but sometimes widely accepted innerworkings of society and the institutions which make up our contemporary world. A basis in scholarly research is a common thread linking Muntadas’s oeuvre, with his having undertaken large scale, research-based projects on such topics as censorship and the media’s culture of fear. Muntadas is also an educator, having served on the faculty of MIT’s Program in Art, Culture, and Technology for over 20 years and having taught as a guest instructor at many important educational institutions throughout Europe and the United States, including the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Paris; Ecoles des Beaux-Arts, Bordeaux and Grenoble; University of California, San Diego; San Francisco Art Institute; Cooper Union, New York; University of São Paulo; and University of Buenos Aires. He has also won many awards, including from the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation; Rockefeller Foundation; National Endowment for the Arts; New York State Council on the Arts; Ars Electronica, Linz, Austria; Laser d'Or, Locarno, Switzerland; Premio Nacional de Artes Plásticas, Catalan; and Premio Velázquez de las Artes Plásticas.[2] In 2005, he represented Spain at the Venice Biennale, presenting an iteration of his On Translation series.

Muntadas’s work is routinely the subject of important institutional exhibitions, with recent solo shows including Dérive Veneziane, 72nd Venice Film Festival, 2015; Asian Protocols, Total Museum, Seoul, 2014; Muntadas: Entre/Between, Museo Nacional Centre de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, 2011-2012, traveled to Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, Lisbon, Jeu de Paume, Paris, and Vancouver Art Gallery, 2012; About Academia, Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts at Harvard University, Cambridge, 2011, traveled to Arizona State University, Phoenix, and American Academy, Rome, 2011; and On Translation: Açik Radyo, Myths and Stereotypes, Istanbul Modern Museum, 2010.[3] Muntadas’s work is in the permanent collections of several important institutions, including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Tate, London; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid; and Palazzo Grassi Pinault Collection, Venice.

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[1 ]Museo Reina Sofia, “Antoni Muntadas: Entre/Between Exhibition Introduction”, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía Website, https://www.museoreinasofia.es/en/exhibitions/antoni-muntadas-entrebetween (accessed November 24, 2020).