Linking together often bizarre scenes, Rottenberg presents enigmatic working processes in which physical “waste materials” – such as blood, sweat and tears, or hair and nails – create new products, sometimes mixed up with salad or make-up. Rottenberg is said to make “seriously political art that is preposterously funny”. In fact with her almost surrealist films she comments on existing ideas about a woman’s right to self-determination, the idealisation of the stereotype of the body and the position of workers in a globalised capitalist economy. The starting point in this is often the miraculous nature of reality. The artist has said: “I see a lot of magic in so many mundane moments”. Rottenberg presents her films in complex installations she has built, which consist partly of her film decors and which she will re-create specially for her exhibition in de Appel.
Opening
March 11 from 18.00