MIKA ROTTENBERG

Rottenberg’s first solo exhibition in Spain will feature celebrated video installations, ‘Cosmic Generator’ (2017 – 2018) and ‘Spaghetti Blockchain’ (2019), alongside her latest ‘Lampshares’ (2025) carved from bittersweet vines and reclaimed plastic. ‘Cosmic Generator’ blurs the distinction between fantasy architecture and real space by collapsing the distance between seemingly disconnected locations – filmed on-site at a market for plastic goods in Yiwu, China and at the border between Mexico and California, alongside elements shot in studio and objects displaced within the installation itself. Similarly, in ‘Spaghetti Blockchain’ the viewer travels through a universe of incongruous scenarios that evoke a range of sensory reactions: footage of vibrant ASMR performances, Siberian Tuvan throat singers, the CERN antimatter factory and a mechanical harvester on a potato farm coalesce and meld.

In her exploration of humanity’s paradoxical attraction to toxicity, Rottenberg has reframed the artist studio as an incubator for the regenerative production of her ‘Lampshares’, beginning in 2023. Working alongside Inner City Green Team and Gary Dusek in New York, Rottenberg combines bittersweet vines that choke forests in Upstate New York with plastic that has been collected, mined and extracted as natural resources or ‘urban gemstones.’ Imbued with new meaning through regenerative systems of creation, the functional sculptures transform otherwise toxic and invasive materials. Interconnected themes of appropriation, distortion and reinvention run through Rottenberg’s playful oeuvre, highlighting our endless difference but at the same time the network of commodities and actions that bind us.

The exhibition will be accompanied by an Education Lab that will take its starting point from the work of both Mika Rottenberg and Cindy Sherman, exploring a shared idea that identity is not static but evolves over time. Our understanding and reading of ourselves and others can be influenced by personal experiences and behaviours, as well as social expectations and influences. The Education Lab will encompass a range of events, performances and activities in collaboration with the Higher School of Dramatic Art of the Balearic Islands (ESADIB) and Trobades & Premis Mediterranis Albert Camus, which will inaugurate its 2025 edition on 9 May at Hauser & Wirth Menorca. The extended events and learning program will feature wider community partners throughout the season, with further details to be announced.