Ricardo Miranda Zúñiga (born 1971 in San Francisco) is an American new media artist who approaches art as a social practice that establishes dialogue in public spaces.
Themes such as immigration, discrimination, gentrification and the effects of globalization extend from his experience and observations into works that tactically engage viewers through populist metaphors while maintaining criticality.
"[2] Zúñiga has shown his works in New York City; Berlin; Madrid;[3] Valencia,[4] Linz, Austria; Quebec; St. Petersburg;[3] Chile; Washington, D.C.; Miami; São Paulo; Mexico;[5] Tennessee; Chicago;[6] Madison, Wisconsin;[7] Buffalo; Philadelphia; and numerous times in California, including in San Francisco.
[8] Not limited to the traditional gallery space, he has exhibited his works in places as various as public parks; within the New York City Subway system; and at the San Diego-Tijuana border.
[19] The sculptural part of the work was made of a series of large ducts that had been interwoven and inserted with monitors featuring computer-animated characters reflecting different histories of the Bowery.
Initiated by requesting personal commentary from people from various generations of the artist's family, Fallout is an open archive of informed and thoughtful insights addressing the past, present and future of Nicaragua.
[22] In the colonial park, Alameda Central, located in the historic center of Mexico City, Zuniga offered free rickshaw rides in 2007 as part of his piece Carreta Nagua, Siglo 21.
[24] El Rito Apasionado (A Passionate Ritual), a video, was inspired by the rhetoric and tactics revolving around immigration used by conservative US officials to capitalize upon Homeland Security and the national fear mechanism utilized to receive funding for the militarization of the United States–Mexico border.
[25] In a hotel room in Connecticut, three non-actors, including Zuñiga, played Guevarrian Neo-Marxist Latino terrorist-revolutionaries meeting to help establish a balance toward justice for the crimes committed by the US toward small and poor nation states, cultures and peoples.
[26] The 22-minute El Ritual Apasionado was commissioned for the exhibition 50,000 Beds curated by Chris Doyle and screened at Real Art Ways in Hartford, Connecticut from July 21 through September 23, 2007.
[30] Speakers sprouted from a voting cart with the wooden busts of the 2008 presidential candidates Barack Obama and John McCain, crafted by Charles Rittman, that broadcast the opinions of participating non-citizen residents.
They tended to define recent events as ones they overheard from television news that their parents watch, with the dominant topic at the time being Michael Jackson's death.
Five experimental sound groups overtook the plaza: ap/xxxxx, B Component, the rottt, OLYVETTY, saal-c performed and broadcast via miniFM, while free wine and beer were distributed.
Zuniga took a few of these already broken-off pieces, which he saw as symbols of Chile's economic devastation, and made simple electronic circuits out of them with a microcontroller, knob, 32-character LCD, on/off switch and LED.
A community-based project that is a collaboration with New York City-based artist Brooke Singer that started in 2012,[41] EXCESS NYC involved the design and fabrication of a quadcycle for food redistribution and composting.