Mika Rottenberg's video installations are full of movement, whether of human bodies, mysterious mixtures, machines, colours, or objects. Using absurdist narrative, humour, and satire, Rottenberg examines themes of labour and production in the contemporary world.
Read MoreRottenberg gained a BFA from New York's School of Visual Arts in 2000, and an MFA from Columbia University in 2004. She lives and works in New York.
Drawing from historical and contemporary stories of labour, corporate production, and materialism, Rottenberg's artworks combine fiction and reality into videos that she describes as 'social surrealism'.
Mika Rottenberg's videos typically concern a custom factory setting, revolving around a crudely built production line with aesthetically unconventional female workers . Among the characters in Dough (2005–2006) is an obese woman, who kneads a white mixture down into a hole, and another with long limbs who passes the dough further along the assembly line. Cheese (2008) is a recreation of the story of the Seven Sutherland Sisters—a 19th -century American singing group known for their long hair and hair fertiliser. The video follows women as they produce cheese from the milk of their extremely long hair.
The movement of human bodies and its associated stigma is implicit in Cosmic Generator (AP) (2017), a video that takes the camera into a long tunnel of coloured lights and darkness. The work begins its setting in a Chinese restaurant in Mexicali, Mexico, and eventually emerges in a market in Yiwu, China. Masses of cheaply manufactured objects from around the world are easily found at the market, while the migration of human bodies causes controversy and prohibition.
The human obsession with the production and consumption of materials is central to Spaghetti Blockchain (2019), which opens with a Tuvan throat singer and leads to a series of various scenes that recall ASMR videos. Manicured hands cut through a roll of gelatin, fry an egg, spray hair, or grab at plastic balls, generating aesthetically pleasing sights and sounds. Towards the end of the video, a panel closes over a hexagonal tunnel, rotating and repeating the process until the camera zooms out to reveal a grid of hexagonal rooms, each occupied by the arms busy at work.
Co-commissioned by the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) Toronto and the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York, Spaghetti Blockchain was included in the travelling solo exhibition Mika Rottenberg: Easypieces at the New Museum and the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (2019), followed by Mika Rottenberg: Spaghetti Blockchain at MOCA Toronto (2020) and Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal (2022).
Rottenberg's videos are often accompanied by objects and sculptural installations that echo their surreal worlds. NoNoseKnows (2015) features a pearl production facility in China's Zhejiang province, whose workers include an extremely tall woman with the uncanny ability to produce a plate of pasta every time she sneezes. The work was exhibited with a bag of cultured pearls at the 56th Venice Biennale (2015) .
The human body and machinery combine in Rottenberg's 'Ponytail' series (2016), in which groomed ponytails protrude from holes in the wall and whip around, seemingly with lives of their own. The viewer may take part in generating movement in works such as #1 with cabbage and ponytail (2020), a participatory sculpture involving a chair and a handle, and #33 with bamboo and bicycle (2020), a sculpture fitted with pedals .
Mika Rottenberg's work has been shown in solo and group exhibitions internationally.
Solo exhibitions include Mika Rottenberg, Hauser & Wirth, Los Angeles (2022); Mika Rottenberg, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Denmark (2021); SNEEZE, Tai Kwun Contemporary, Hong Kong (2020); Bowls Balls Souls Holes, Sprüth Magers, Berlin (2018).
Group exhibitions include Busan Biennale (2022); JSC on View: Mythologists, Julia Stoschek Foundation, Düsseldorf (2021); You and I don't live on the same planet, Taipei Biennial (2020); 16th Istanbul Biennial (2019).
Sherry Paik | Ocula | 2022
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