Mika Rottenberg, KUB 2018.02
Kunsthaus Bregenz, Autriche
2018
Her work is neither disinterested criticism nor rigorous political documentation. Rather, she is involved in con-ducting a contemporary analysis by means of exaggerated distortion and caricature. Rottenberg’s spaces are un-comfortable experiences. Her installations, fabricated from cardboard and found objects, revolve around videos depicting specific production processes, such as the extracting of pearls from mussel shells.
Mika Rottenberg’s work narrates bizarre actions that nevertheless possess a serious background. She highlights the premises of labor, whilst simultaneously forcing the viewer into the role of a voyeur who is coerced into narrow corridors in order to view the processes of work. Her surreal scenographies lay bare absurd accumulations of commodities and the senselessness of global distri-bution. Many of her installations are quite humorous and are full of erotic elements.
People, mostly women, process commodities in monotonous assembly-line work. The performers, who hardly fulfill ordinary ideals of beauty, become surreal figures with supernatural powers. They are physically conspicuous too, muscular or obese, overly tall or long-nosed, they sweat and sneeze. Their bodies become both tool and raw material, enriching the things being produced, refining and transforming them. Rottenberg portrays the capitalist world and its industrialized production with humorous and biting exaggeration..
