Mika Rottenberg
MOCA, Toronto
November 12, 2020 – April 11, 2021

MOCA is working with Argentina-born, New York-based artist Mika Rottenberg to present three of her most recent film installations along with a number of sculptural works. This will be the first time that Rottenberg’s work is exhibited in Toronto. MOCA partnered with the New Museum, NYC back in 2017, to co-commission Rottenberg’s latest work, Spaghetti Blockchain, 2019. The exhibition at MOCA will feature this inspiring work alongside installations No Nose Knows, 2015 and Cosmic Generator, 2017.

The video Spaghetti Blockchain brings together seemingly irreconcilable worlds-Tuvan throat singers, filmed on the steppes of Siberia and Mongolia; surreal interiors of the Large Hadron Collider near Geneva; the mechanical harvesting of a massive potato farm; ASMR-video-style scenarios with tingly overdubs of jiggling and sizzling – and places them in a kind of superfluous factory of her devising, whose primary product seems to be imagery that’s simultaneously pleasurable and queasily troubling. Rottenberg is devoted to a rigorous practice that combines film, architectural installation, and sculpture to explore ideas of labor and the production of value in our contemporary hyper-capitalist world. The overall exhibition design is being planned with Rottenberg, who is developing her spatial practice to include a sustainable angle using unfinished/reusable materials.

Rottenberg has exhibited extensively internationally and has recently had solo exhibitions at the Sprengel Museum Hannover; Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago and at the New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York. In 2019 her work was included in the 16th Istanbul Biennial and the same year she was awarded the Kurt Schwitters Prize, a biennial award that recognizes artists who have made a significant contribution to contemporary art.

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