Mika Rottenberg

Mika Rottenberg (born 1976) is a contemporary Argentine video artist who lives and works in New York City. Rottenberg is best known for her surreal video and installation work that often deals with the subject of female labor. Her work has been exhibited both nationally and internationally.

Biography

Mika Rottenberg was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina in 1976. She made aliyah to Israel with her family in 1977. In 1998, she graduated from HaMidrasha School of Art, Beit Berl College, Israel. In 2000, Rottenberg moved to New York to continue her education, receiving a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the School of Visual Arts in 2000 and a Master of Fine Arts from Columbia University in 2004. She is currently represented by Andrea Rosen Gallery in New York.[1]

Rottenberg's video works feature women with various physical eccentricities, such as being very tall, large-bodied, or muscular, performing physical acts that serve as an allegory for the human condition in post-modern times. Her videos are inspired by stories where women have an unusual characteristic about their bodies that makes them a commodity, and specifically the women who advertise their unusual characteristic online to be utilized for hire. Some of the concepts her art deals with involve labor, body/environment relationships, and fictional logic.

Significant works

Mary's Cherries (2004), which shows a woman's red fingernails being grown, clipped, and transformed into maraschino cherries, was influenced by a story about a woman with a rare blood type who quit her job to sell her blood. The women featured in Mary's Cherries are all wrestlers for hire. Cheese (2007) is a multi-channel video installation that depicts women with very long hair milking cows and making cheese using a machine powered by the movement of the women's hair.[2] Rottenberg's work was showcased at the Whitney Biennial 2008.[3]

Squeeze (2010) is a video shot on location at a lettuce farm in Arizona and a rubber plant in Kirala, India. Actors engage in a variety of gestures including thrusting a tongue through a stucco wall, a line of women massaging hands that protrude through a wall, and Bunny Glamazon being smashed between two mattresses.[4]

In 2011, Rottenberg collaborated with artist Jon Kessler on SEVEN, a performance and installation created for Performa 11 in New York City, performed at Nicole Klagsbrun Gallery. According to the Performa website, SEVEN "collapse[d] film time and real time to create an intricate laboratory that channels body fluids and colors into a spectacle on the African savannah. In New York, a “Chakra Juicer” will capture sweat from seven performers engaging in ritualistic athletic activity."[5][6]

In 2013, Rottenberg held a solo exhibition at the Israel Museum, in Jerusalem.[7]

In 2015, her work "NoNoseKnows" was featured in the Venice Biennale as part of an exhibition curated by Okwui Enwezor: "All the World's Futures."

In addition to video, Rottenberg has also exhibited paintings and photographs. She is represented by Andrea Rosen Gallery and Laurent Godin Gallery.

Awards and prizes

Collections

Rottenberg’s work is represented in numerous major museum and public collections including the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Brooklyn Museum, National Gallery of Canada, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston and Tel Aviv Museum of Art and Rose Art Museum.[8]

References

  1. ↑ Mika Rottenberg at Andrea Rosen Gallery, http://www.andrearosengallery.com/artists/mika-rottenberg
  2. ↑ Hudson, Judith (Fall 2010). "Mika Rottenberg". BOMB Magazine. New Artist Publications. Retrieved 1 February 2014.
  3. ↑ Whitney Biennial 2008
  4. ↑ The Reckoning: Women Artists of the New Millennium. Prestel. 2013. p. 65. ISBN 978-3-7913-4759-2.
  5. ↑ Mika Rottenberg and Jon Kessler, SEVEN, Performa 11, http://11.performa-arts.org/event/rottenberg-kessler-performa-commission
  6. ↑ Smith, Roberta. Mika Rottenberg and Jon Kessler, 'Seven,' The New York Times, November 10, 2011.
  7. ↑ Squeeze, Video Works by Mika Rottenberg, Israel Museum, Jerusalem Squeeze
  8. ↑ work, Copywritten. "Mika Rottenberg - Artist - Andrea Rosen Gallery". www.andrearosengallery.com. Retrieved 2017-03-12.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.