A Tampa Bay artist threw tomato soup on other people’s art. Why?

TAMPA — The room looked like a murder scene, with walls lined in plastic and thick red liquid splattered all over.

Artwork filled the space for “American Art Show,” a group exhibition presented by the Department of Contemporary Art, Tampa, FL. Artist Emiliano Settecasi, the gallery’s founder, curated the show that opened July 18, the last one ever at his space in Ybor City’s Historic Kress Building.

Unbeknownst to the artists who submitted work, Settecasi planned to use the art as a form of protest against the war in Gaza, as well as other facets of American capitalism.

On the day of the show’s opening reception, he threw tomato soup on the art — reminiscent of the climate change protestors that deface masterworks across the world — and left the building.

Settecasi left no written explanation, but had an assistant in the room to field reactions and pay artists for their work when they arrived for the opening.

Many of the artists were upset and confused by the stunt.

Jessica Bender, a portrait and documentary photographer from Sarasota, submitted a photograph of the Blue Ridge Mountains. She planned to come to the opening reception with friends and family.

She was shocked to see her photograph smeared with soup.

When Settecasi’s assistant approached her to pay her and record her reaction, she was “very hesitant,” she said, “but I just was in panic and I wanted to do the right thing.”

“I hadn’t processed what this was about yet. I basically just communicated that I was shocked, but that it was iconic or something with nervous laughter in between.”

She realized her work had been used for a broader meaning, but didn’t even learn what that meaning was until days later through social media.

“I think it could have been just as effective had the artists been brought into the conversation,” she said.

During an interview the weekend after the event, Settecasi, 29, said selling art is selling out, and the only way to capture people’s attention is to be polarizing. He saw it as a way to make history, even if he became the villain.

Some works were untouched by the soup, including a photograph of a pro-Palestine protest in Washington, D.C., and a painting of reality-blurring comedian Nathan Fielder by Fary Charles, known professionally as Junkyrd.

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Instead of putting a monetary value on his piece, Charles accepted different forms of payment, like a pizza from the local restaurant New York, New York or booking a tattoo appointment at the shop where he works.

That move spared it from being souped.

“My initial feeling was man, I kind of missed out on my piece being tomatoed,” Charles said. He considers Settecasi a “prompt-based artist who cares about doing something with meaning.”

Backlash on social media revealed a divide in the local art community. Many people abhorred Settecasi’s actions, while others voiced support for the artist and curator who has been active in Tampa Bay for the past nine years.

Initially, the soup stunt was intended to be the last part of a project Settecasi currently has on display at the Museum of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg, as part of the multi-artist “Skyway 2024″ exhibition.

The installation, “The Department of Contemporary Art is Selling Out,” is composed of moveable walls and fixtures Settecasi built with signage inviting “anyone with a ton of money but no sense … real estate developers … grifters” to “own the means of cultural production” for the “low price of $499,999.99.”

It’s located in the museum’s gift shop and is loaded with merchandise: stickers, T-shirts, hats, patches and fans that come inside a box that says “don’t sweat on the art.” But nothing is actually for sale.

Screens flash images that read “The Department of Contemporary Art is Out of Money” and “Radical Aesthetics without Radical Practice.” A small sign says “Make Art History” with a note from Settecasi asking potential buyers to “consider how much you desperately need the rest of us to keep believing in art if you would like to extend your grip on society for the next decade.”

Although the piece presents as tongue-in-cheek, it actually represents the disillusionment he’s come to after years of trying to make it as an artist.

Settecasi attended the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York, from 2013-2014 but found the “artist boot-camp” model didn’t work for him. He returned to his native Tampa to go to the University of South Florida and graduated with a bachelor’s of fine art in 2016.

He began volunteering at Tampa art gallery and collective Tempus Projects in 2017. By then, he’d started curating at local galleries and connecting with different groups of artists in Ybor City.

In 2018, he started working as a gallery assistant at Hillsborough Community College. He was curating shows around town, with the intention of addressing societal ills and political issues in written statements and working with like-minded artists.

Charles is one of those artists. He participated in 2019′s “Rapscallion,” a show curated by Settecasi that featured millennial artists responding to the state of the world they inherited from their parents’ generation, marked by war and economic doom.

Settecasi’s intellectual and questioning approach to art appealed to Charles, who said they would discuss how to make art that has meaning, even if the response is anger.

In 2022, Settecasi decided to leave his position at HCC and open the Department of Contemporary Art, Tampa, FL as one of the first new tenants to take advantage of affordable rent at the Historic Kress Building. That’s where the tomato soup incident happened on July 18.

After two years of not selling any art there, he made the decision to close the gallery. He’d been making ends meet as an art installer for other gallery owners and his grandmother’s live-in caretaker.

His next goal as an artist was to get into a museum, which would provide a bigger platform for his ideas. The perfect opportunity arose with “Skyway,” a recurring exhibition that brings local artists into five Tampa Bay museums.

He was accepted into the show at the Museum of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg. But curator Katherine Pill said it was difficult for the museum to display everything he originally submitted, because the piece was so critical of capitalism and people in power, and comments on the role of museums.

What remains still offers a look into Settecasi’s goals as an artist.

In a locked display case in his exhibit is a copy of “The Emiliano Reader,” a compilation of exhibition statements he wrote for five shows he curated from 2019-2023. They are all highly political. The forward of the book is dedicated to the artists who participated in the shows.

“Though your talent is boundless, our world is a prison,” he wrote. “I’ll never stop trying to break us out.”