{"id":85745,"date":"2015-05-14T14:19:28","date_gmt":"2015-05-14T18:19:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=85745"},"modified":"2015-05-14T14:45:55","modified_gmt":"2015-05-14T18:45:55","slug":"work-about-work","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/05\/14\/work-about-work\/","title":{"rendered":"Work About Work"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"rottenberg3\"<\/a>

Mika Rottenberg, Barbara from Mary\u2019s Cherries<\/i>, 2004, color photograph<\/p><\/div>\n

Mika Rottenberg<\/a>\u2019s installation NoNoseKnows<\/em>, showing now at the Venice Biennale<\/a>, focuses on production, as much of her work does: in the video, we watch an assembly line of women making pearls. They turn hand cranks; they manipulate knitting needles; they partake of the despondent rigmarole that is factory life. Soon enough, though, the images lurch toward phantasm. Some of the women are dozing peacefully at their stations; some have their feet submerged in whole baskets of pearls; and their labor is directed from underground by a kind of Pinocchio-nosed queen bee, an exhausted, frazzled woman with a nasty cold. Then, as Randy Kennedy writes in the\u00a0New York Times<\/em><\/a>, comes the denouement:<\/p>\n

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the woman sneezes explosively, causing steaming plates of Chinese food and pasta to burst from her inflamed schnozz, which seems to provide the pearl workers\u2019 sole nourishment; the process repeats, maybe endlessly.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Yum. <\/p>\n

\u201cFor more than a decade, Ms. Rottenberg\u2019s work has been mostly about work, and about women doing it,\u201d Kennedy says. \u201cHer pieces often envision candy-colored, fictional factories<\/a>, staffed by women of wildly varying sizes, colors, and body types, where real commodities are produced by absurd means.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"rottenberg2\"<\/a>If any of this is ringing a distant bell, it might be because we featured Rottenberg in our Summer 2011 issue<\/a>, where the painter Marilyn Minter<\/a> similarly described her work as \u201ca paean to workers and factory labor.\u201d Minter taught Rottenberg for two years at the School of Visual Arts. Rottenberg, she writes,<\/p>\n

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began as a phenomenally talented painter, and when she switched to making video art, I thought, She\u2019s trying to fit herself into the dialogue rather than doing what she\u2019s good at \u2026 \u201cYou\u2019ll have to convince me that you\u2019re a video artist,\u201d I remember informing her. Not long after, she started building the elaborate constructions featured in her videos and the equally impressive installations that house the monitors displaying her footage. Suddenly I saw that she was an exceptional video artist.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Mika\u2019s art \u201cis replete with metaphor and allegory,\u201d Minter says:<\/p>\n

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Her actors are people she finds on the Internet who do one thing exceptionally well, whether it\u2019s growing their hair to Rapunzel-esque lengths or making a living as fetish workers beloved for their corpulence. Mika\u2019s art celebrates these actors and their work. Her protagonists transform their bodily excretions, via whimsical assembly-line processes, into consumable products. In one piece, red-lacquered fingernails become maraschino cherries. In another, a bodybuilder lets his sweat drip into a hot frying pan. If viewers find these scenarios repulsive, that\u2019s not Mika\u2019s intent\u2014I feel pretty sure of it. She just has a clear, fresh, idiosyncratic vision of the world, and she\u2019s faithfully carrying out that vision.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Below are excerpts from four of her works, including NoNoseKnows<\/em>. You can see more video from Rottenberg\u2019s gallery, Andrea Rosen<\/a>, and click here to purchase a copy of Issue 211<\/a>, which includes a portfolio of Rottenberg\u2019s work alongside Laurel Nakadate\u2019s.<\/p>\n

Dough<\/em>, 2005\u20136.<\/p>\n