In the absurd realm of waving tufts of hair and nibbling rabbits
Published: Tuesday, Jun 4th 2024, 14:11
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With the special exhibition "Animatter Factory", the Museum Tinguely Basel takes us into the absurd and bizarre art spheres of artist Mika Rottenberg. Her works question the connections between everyday life and the logic of capitalist production.
Visitors are greeted on their route by a tuft of blonde hair blowing out of a wall. An absurdly funny moment, but not much more for the time being.
The video installation "Cheese" two rooms further on reveals what this is all about. Here, New York-based Argentinian artist Mika Rottenberg tells the story of the "Seven Sutherland Sisters", who apparently gave up producing goat's cheese around 1900 because they could earn much more money with their extra-long hair as a trademark for a hair restorer.
Rottenberg now spins this story further in an absurd way. In a wooden shed, various videos show how the long hair is used as a leavening agent for the production of this very cheese.
Absurd connections
In her art, Mika Rottenberg drives capitalist production processes into the absurd. At first glance, her works are witty and grotesque nonsense, but on closer inspection, satirical contexts shimmer through.
This is also the case in the video installation "No Nose Knows". As a kind of prologue, men with grotesquely enlarged noses can be seen alternately sneezing live rabbits and beef steaks.
This leads via a kind of studio for making bunnies from pearls into the actual installation, which combines real documentation of cultured pearl production in China with a bizarre and absurd artistic moment. The pearls ultimately lead to a woman with an elongated nose who sneezes out Chinese noodle dishes, triggered by allergic reactions to flower arrangements.
The exhibition "Mika Rottenberg. Antimatter Factory" at the Museum Tinguely can be seen until November 3.
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