APT8 insight

 

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Ramin Haerizadeh, Rokni Haerizadeh and Hesam Rahmanian / Installation view of ‘Slice A Slanted Arc Into Dry Paper Sky’, Kunsthalle Zürich, 2015 / Images courtesy: The artists and Gallery Isabelle van den Eynde, UAE

An interview with Ramin Haerizadeh, Rokni Haerizadeh and Hesam Rahmanian

With sharp eyes and wits, three West Asian artists collect multifarious objects and references to create paintings, collage, sculpture and video works. They each have individual practices, as well as collaborating on immersive installations, in which they combine materials to form densely layered ‘wonder-rooms’, where genders bend and authority crumbles. Currently developing a major work for APT8, they spoke with Ellie Buttrose about some of the ideas behind their practice.

Ellie Buttrose (EB) | Why is collaboration integral to your work?

Ramin Haerizadeh, Rokni Haerizadeh and Hesam Rahmanian (RR&H) | We work together constantly, and then we try to share some of that spirit with the people who encounter our exhibitions. The collaboration is not something we intentionally set out to do; it comes naturally out of our way of living together. We wanted to challenge the idea that art is an object, neatly packaged up, and that artists are egoistic seers of wisdom. We have lived together in Dubai since 2009, after a while we realised that this life together has become something of a constant performance in that we’re constantly building something. Not intentionally making an ‘artwork’, but shopping and collecting objects around the city can become part of the process of the works. It’s about finding some way of making art without making art.

That’s why it’s important for us to improvise in our exhibitions, there and then in the exhibition space itself, and we like to bring along with us those people who — whether they know it or not — feed our lives and practice. We’re tired of these definitions of artists and non-artists, art and nonart. We try to make a little space from our life together, and if that is art for you, then great.

EB | Can you describe the Persian theatre tradition of Ta’ziyeh, how its principles are applied in your practice?

RR&H | This notion of a unified ‘Persian culture’ is not something we believe in. There are unending confluences, influences and variations that you can find in the regions of what we call Iran and in fact we are fascinated by the rituals — the dance, the movements — that emerge in these areas, which may perhaps be a response to the geography and ambience of the place that the people live in.

It’s important to say that Ta’ziyeh was never defined as theatre as such. It comes from a day of mourning and is a ritualised, non-scripted improvisation on a story from Shia Islam. Although it does have some elements that are comparable to theatre, like the use of props, cross-dressing, and the way the people distance themselves from the (holy) characters they are playing. You can find connections with other ‘poor street rituals’ around the world, the mummers from England and the passion stories from Europe, for example.

This ritual that unconsciously responds to the ambience of a place is something we try to find in our collaboration, and the self-designed ritual that we follow every day of working together is a Ta’ziyeh of its own. In the Ta’ziyeh, the props that are used are all borrowed from people in the village — the butcher’s boots, or the imam’s coat. This somehow charges the objects for the people watching the Ta’ziyeh, and in their minds they become part of it. We also like the audience to share in our work in a similar way.

EB | Your installations have a comfortable, domestic feeling that invites the viewer in, often created through your incorporation of household objects, as if you are making a home in the gallery, be it in Dubai, Zurich, Brisbane or Boston. Please tell us about your method for creating a sense of ‘home’ regardless of where you are.

RR&H | Happiness is the process of doing something — but that means being and thinking in the present, without intrigue and without ambition: that we can call happiness. When you want to comprehend or understand something, you have to love that thing, bring it into your world and thereby create a relation [to it] that we could call home. We have to then dismantle or at least re describe this word ‘home’. What we call home is somewhere we are temporarily happy. When we’re installing an exhibition in Zurich, it becomes our home for a while. We don’t believe that home is something rooted in a place.

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Chai-e Iran (stills) 2013–14 / Video: 16:9, 26:39 minutes, colour, sound / Images courtesy: The artists

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The Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art (APT) is the Gallery’s flagship exhibition focused on the work of Asia, the Pacific and Australia / 21 November 2015 – 10 April 2016

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APT8: United Arab Emirates and West Asia

 

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Top: Soviet-era mosaic with graffiti, Tbilisi, Georgia / Bottom: A. Kasteev Art Museum, Almaty, Kazakhstan / Images courtesy: Simon Wright

In 2014 Ellie Buttrose and Simon Wright journeyed to the United Arab Emirates, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyz Republic, Georgia And Turkey, undertaking research for ‘The 8th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art’, which opens this November. Here we continue our series on the research and development behind the Gallery’s flagship exhibition series.

West Asia encompasses the countries between Pakistan and Turkey. It is a vast distance to cover, and political instability has rendered much of it inaccessible. In November 2014, Assistant Director Simon Wright and I set off for the United Arab Emirates, which has recently become a regional hub of contemporary art, with the Sharjah Biennial and Art Dubai art fair. Our first destination was warehouse area of Alserkal Avenue in Dubai, known for its commercial galleries. Next was the Sharjah Art Foundation, which facilitates the Sharjah Biennial. The foundation is in a heritage area of preserved Emirati homes, a stimulating change from the architectural flights of fancy that crowd Dubai. Then it was off to the capital Abu Dhabi, where the Louvre, Guggenheim, Zayed National Museum and Performing Arts Centre’s infamous feats of engineering are currently under construction. We visited Guggenheim Abu Dhabi’s first exhibition, ‘Seeing Through Light’, which included past APT participants Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian, Bharti Kher and Yayoi Kusama. Slated to become a major player in the region for contemporary art, it was interesting to see how the Guggenheim was contextualising the history of the Emirates and of the region within a global art history. How to write such a history — to encompass the many migrants who stop over or stay — was the concern of many artists, curators and dealers.

Next, we plunged from the 30-plus-degree sands of the UAE into the minus-14, snowcovered Soviet architecture of Kazakhstan. Although touted as the best example of a free market economy in Central Asia, little of Kazakhstan’s wealth — mainly derived from oil — has been directed to the arts. Formerly the capital, Almaty continues to be the centre for business. It is also the centre for culture, but there is little formal arts infrastructure. Our first stop was to the home of APT7 artist Erbossyn Meldibekov. While many artists of Meldibekov’s generation are established internationally, the domestic contemporary art scene is yet to overcome the loss of its major contemporary art centre in 2009. As we departed, we wondered who will support and present the forthcoming generation of Kazakh artists.

A quick flight over the mountain range brought us to Bishkek in the Kyrgyz Republic, home of the Dordoy Bazaar, comprised of rows of stacked shipping containers filled with products made in China and said to be the largest market in Asia. Though the contemporary art scene in Bishkek is even smaller than Almaty’s, it retains some strong initiatives. One of them is the School of Theory and Activism, Bishkek (STAB), an artistic and political research initiative that has recently mapped the Soviet murals across the city and was about to hold a conference on issues related to creative urbanism. The difficulties of navigating a nomadic past, Soviet occupation, recent independence and the introduction of a capitalist economic system were key concerns among artists in Kazakhstan and the Kyrgyz Republic.

Across the Caspian Sea, our next destination was Tbilisi, Georgia, with its rich layering of histories the result of rule by many empires. Some of its most interesting artists and organisations have an eye towards community engagement and social practice. Housed within a former medical museum, the Center of Contemporary Art places equal emphasis on exhibitions and flexible, independent education. Another is GeoAIR, whose projects take place in the community or via publications while their space is used for research and residencies.

While Istanbul is not the official capital, it remains Turkey’s cultural and economic centre. Alongside its famous Biennale, the city has a strong group of commercial dealers and ambitious private museums. We met with November Paynter, the Associate Director of Research and Programmes at SALT, to discuss developments in Turkey’s art ecology since she co-curated ‘0 – Now: Traversing West Asia’ with Russell Storer for APT7. The 2014 Gezi Park protests dominated many of our conversations and numerous artists have responded directly to the event. After back-to-back meetings with artists and curators, many of whom are now developing projects for APT8, we were reminded of the legacy of the APT by a visit to ‘The Roving Eye: Contemporary Art from South-East Asia’ at Arter, which included artists from every single instalment of the Triennial. There is a vast distance between these works’ origins and where they were exhibited: a reminder that art enables us to breach both distance and difference, if only momentarily.

Tomás Saraceno’s webs & interconnected spheres

 

Argentine artist Tomas Saraceno is internationally renowned for his ambitious sculptures and installations that take the form of webs and interconnected spheres or bubbles. Frequently created through weaving and looping elastic rope into complex geometric forms they often resemble spider webs or clusters of galaxies.

Taking his cue from architects such as Frei Otto (famous for designing the Munich Olympic Arena based on experiments with soap bubbles) and R Buckminster Fuller (the avant-garde architect who popularised the geodesic dome), biological systems inform the formal qualities of Saraceno’s work. In an ongoing body of work entitled ‘Air-Port-City’, the artist presents installations as designs for interconnected floating cities that function like clouds separating and coming together, thereby blurring political distinctions between nation states.1 In this body of work, architecture moves away from bricks and mortar and becomes malleable and responsive to specific issues at hand.

Tomás Saraceno ‘Biosphere 02’ 2009

Tomás Saraceno, Argentina b.1973 / Biosphere 02 2009 / PVC, rope, nylon monofilament, acrylic, Tillandsia plants, air pressure regulator system, hydration system / Purchased 2014 with funds from Tim Fairfax, AC, through the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art Foundation / Collection: Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art / © Tomás Saraceno
Tomás Saraceno, Argentina b.1973 / Biosphere 02 2009 / PVC, rope, nylon monofilament, acrylic, Tillandsia plants, air pressure regulator system, hydration system / Purchased 2014 with funds from Tim Fairfax, AC, through the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art Foundation / Collection: Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art / © Tomás Saraceno
Tomás Saraceno, Argentina b.1973 / Biosphere 02 2009 / PVC, rope, nylon monofilament, acrylic, Tillandsia plants, air pressure regulator system, hydration system / Purchased 2014 with funds from Tim Fairfax, AC, through the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art Foundation / Collection: Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art / © Tomás Saraceno

Each of the four Biosphere works recently acquired by the Gallery demonstrates the artist’s signature technique of intertwining rope, in this case weaving it around transparent, inflated bubbles. Their architecture is similar to that of geodesic domes. In parallel with ideas of interconnected floating cities is the artist’s ongoing interest in the structure of spider webs and their flexibility in a changing environment. Biosphere resembles a spider’s web — each threaded and knotted piece of rope within it is equally important to the structural integrity of the whole form, acting as a metaphor for the interconnectedness of ecosystems.

Saraceno is influenced by ideas of networking and ecology, and by philosophers and social theorists who look to the systems in nature in order to provide new approaches to thinking about the world.2 He is specifically taken with the way that French philosopher Felix Guattari in The Three Ecologies (1989) ‘extends the definition of ecology to encompass social relations and human subjectivity as well as environmental concerns.’3 Saraceno suggests that we:

. . . start talking about the aesthetics and ethics of the economy, social ecology, politics . . . I think we should learn from the principle of ecology as a system of cohabitation of different cultural areas and understand the need for a principle of cooperation.4

This is apparent in his artworks, where the political and the aesthetic come together to reimagine the way we live.

This group of works also takes inspiration from the ‘Biosphere 2’ experiments in Arizona in the early 1990s, which analysed the possibility of humans living within closed ecological environments. While the overall experiment was ultimately abandoned, the research undertaken continues to be drawn upon by practitioners in various fields of study. Saraceno’s Biosphere 02 sculpture contains Tillandsia plants — a type of bromeliad that is native to the Americas. They receive all of their nutrients from water and air so are perfect for a closed ecosystem, like a floating garden. Looking at Saraceno’s ‘floating gardens’ we are invited to imagine industrialised cities with similar floating bubbles containing gardens hovering on the skyline, thereby making green parks accessible in places where they had not previously been.

Watch | Installation of Biospheres

Tomás Saraceno ‘Biosphere cluster’ 2009

Tomás Saraceno, Argentina b.1973 / Biosphere cluster 2009 / PVC, rope, nylon monofilament, acrylic, Tillandsia plants, air pressure regulator system, hydration system / Purchased 2014 with funds from Tim Fairfax, AC, through the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art Foundation / Collection: Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art / © Tomás Saraceno

Hungarian-born, Paris-based architect Yona Friedman and the British group of architects Archigram are also key influences on the artist. Friedman and Archigram created designs for futuristic modular and mobile buildings, many of which were hypothetical designs that remain unrealised. This is similar to the way that Saraceno presents his installations as designs for possible dwellings but ultimately chooses not to realise them in the architectural field. Rather, Saraceno draws from these architects to profoundly rethink the parameters of architecture and its nexus with art.5

Though the forms and ideas found in Tomas Saraceno’s Biosphere sculptures are layered and complex, the art works have a sense of physical lightness and wonder. The experience of weaving through the threads of rope extending out from the works and of looking up at the Biosphere works appearing to levitate in the air gives a wonderful physicality to these ideas. While the proposition of clusters of biosphere cities in the sky may be utopian, it is a reminder that contemporary art provides space in which we can imagine a profoundly different new future.

Endnotes
1  It is evident that the artist was inspired by R Buckminster Fuller’s Cloud Nine c.1960 — a free‑floating sphere that Fuller proposed could be inhabited by various groups at one time.
2  Key thinkers include French sociologist Bruno Latour and German philosopher Peter Sloterdijk.
3  The artist quoted in Tomás Saraceno. Distanz Verlag, Berlin, 2011, p.42.
4  The artist quoted in Tomás Saraceno, p.46.
5  This not to say that Saraceno is not interested in real‑world outcomes. For instance, he patented and made freely available a type of Aerogel — made from helium, hydrogen and other gases — that is lighter than air.

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Fallen Fruit: Pineapple Express!

 
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Queensland 1897, Pine-apple Plantation, Nudgee (Brisbane) | Reproduced courtesy: John Oxley Library, Brisbane
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Poster Estate Map – Pineapple Estate, Kangaroo Point | Reproduced courtesy: State Library of Queensland, Brisbane
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Girl sitting in a crate of Queensland pineapples, 1924 | Reproduced courtesy: State Library of Queensland, Brisbane

As part of the forthcoming exhibition ‘Harvest’, LA-based collective Fallen Fruit (David Burns & Austin Young) are creating a display of objects sourced from the general public that represent the pineapple in all possible ways and producing a pineapple wallpaper alongside this display. In the lead up to the exhibition the artists’ tell us about their particular interest in the pineapple.

It has been said that pineapples are ‘Too ravishing for moral taste . . .’ The truth is that Australian’s eat over 20 million pineapples per year and the first commercial planting (in Australia) was established in a current day suburb of Brisbane in the mid-19th century.

Native to pre-Colombian Brazil, the pineapple was traded as a symbol of goodwill between indigenous people in South America. This is where European explorers learnt about the fruit in the late 15th Century. Christopher Columbus brought the pineapple back to Europe as a gift and it was quickly popular with Europe’s royalty. Exotic fruits, like pineapple, were available for rent to display at parties. However, it was only the very wealthy who could afford to eat them. The pineapple remained a status symbol for about 100 years, and King Charles II of England commissioned ‘an official portrait receiving a pineapple as a gift’.

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Attributed to Hendrick Danckerts Royal Gardener John Rose and King Charles II 1675

Because of early 20th century plantations, cultural tourism, and global food production, contemporary associations with the pineapple are about sublime vacations, tinned fruit, and cliché images of sunset beach scenes. Pineapples decorate household objects, t-shirts, and wallpaper. The flavour is infused in classic desserts, childhood sweets and tropical cocktails.

The symbolism of the pineapple is ubiquitous. For centuries across all cultures in the world pineapples represent hospitality and welcomeness. Even in its early cultural references this unique tasting tropical fruit embodies goodwill and a respect for all parties, both hosts and guests. Pineapples are a symbolic gateway and often adorn the threshold of a doorway in the form of a matt or the walls or in the ornamentation of the furniture in a guest room.

Pineapples are truly transnational, they embody world culture and they navigate language barriers and class systems. Losing nothing in translation, the pineapple is a universal symbol that means that you are welcome.

Fallen Fruit (David Burns & Austin Young)

Submissions for Fallen Fruit: Pineapple Express! Close midnight 25 May 2015.

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Fallen Fruit (David Burns & Austin Young) / Fruit Machine: Blue Pineapple 2014 / Image courtesy: The artists

Harvest’ opens 28 June 2014 across the ground floor galleries at GOMA and will explore the production, consumption and symbolism of food. It takes as a point of departure colonial legacies and globalisation, labour and consumption in relation to the food industry. The exhibition will be presented in conjunction with the Australian Cinémathèque program ‘Harvest: Food on Film’ and will be accompanied by a stunning illustrated publication.

Malick Sidibé: Regardez-moi (Look at me!)

 

With the generous assistance of Tim Fairfax, AC, the Gallery recently acquired a group of photographs by Malick Sidibé, taken soon after independence was declared in the north-west African country of Mali.

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Malick Sidibé, Mali 1935-2016 / Regardez-moi 1962, printed 2013 / Gelatin silver print / Purchased 2013 with funds from Tim Fairfax, AM, through the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art Foundation / Collection: Queensland Art Gallery / © The artist

Malick Sidibé (1935 – 2016) is one of Mali’s most distinguished photographers. In 2003, he won the Hasselbad Award, the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the Venice Biennale in 2007, and in 2008, the International Contemporary Photography Award. The Gallery recently acquired a group of stunning black and-white photographs by the artist: Regardez-moi (Look at me!) 1962, Fans de James Brown (James Brown fans) 1965, Soirée marriage Drissa Balo (Drissa Balo wedding party) 1967, Les très bons amis en même tenue (Very good friends in the same outfit) 1972 and Jeune homme avec pattes d’éléphant, sacoche et montre (Young man with bell bottoms, bag and watch) 1977.

Sidibé opened Studio Malick in Bamako in the late 1950s. He was at the centre of cultural and social life of the city during the 1950s and 60s, capturing the excitement over the transition to independence in 1960. This is evident in his images, which offer a sense of intimacy with the subjects portrayed. He was the only reporter to cover the breadth of events that took place across the city, from birthday parties and public occasions to club nights. Sidibé describes his typical work day:

I would be in my studio until ten or eleven at night, because the nightlife didn’t start early. Then I’d go off to the clubs with my bike, until five in the morning! I could cover five places all at once, especially on Saturdays and during the holidays. Young people trusted me, they were with me, on my side. Garrincha [Youssouf Doumbia] and I were invited everywhere. People said if we were at a party, it gave it prestige. I would let people know I’d arrived by letting off my flash, people made way to let me in, and everyone was happy . . . I made the prints when I got back from the parties, sometimes even at six in the morning. I grouped them by club, then I numbered them and stuck them into cardboard folders. It was a whole lot of works, and very fiddly, but only I could do it . . . I would display the photos on Mondays or Tuesday in front of the studio. Everyone who’s been at those parties was there and they’d laugh when they saw the photos. It was a lively time.1

This was a time that saw major cultural change, with young people organising their own clubs at which they played the latest music from Europe, the United States and Cuba. This generation was linked to the ‘universal youth movement of the 1960s’, not only through their taste in music and fashion, but also in their politics.2

In the early days of Malian independence, Sidibé captured images of a generation that was looking for inspiration beyond their own country and continent, who were exploring their personal freedoms in the context of new postcolonial political freedom on a national level. The artist was sought out and entrusted to ‘represent them in the way that they wished to be seen’.3

Endnotes
1  Malick Sidibé, ‘Studio Malick’, Malick Sidibé, André Magnin (ed.), Scalo Gallerie, Zürich, 1998, pp.37–9.
2  Manthia Diawara, ‘1960s in Bamako: Malick Sidibé and James Brown’, Black Renaissance / Renaissance Noire, vol.4, 2002, pp.62–3.
3  ‘Malick Sidibé’, We Face Forward: Art from West Africa Today, Manchester Art Gallery, Manchester, 2012, p.90.

Highlight: Mika Rottenberg ‘Mary’s cherries’

 
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Mika Rottenberg, Argentia b.1976 / Mary’s cherries (stills) 2004 / Single-channel video installation / Purchased 2013. Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art Foundation / Collection: Queensland Art Gallery / Images courtesy: The artist and Andrea Rosen Gallery, New York /The presentation of this work in ‘Harvest’ is supported by Council on Australia Latin America Relations

Questions of labour and the exploitation of women’s bodies lie at the heart of Mika Rottenberg’s humorous video installations, one of which was recently purchased for the Gallery’s Collection.

Often in Mika Rottenberg’s video works, female characters with striking physical presences and in unusual environments, undertake a mundane, productive task that results in an unexpected output. When asked about her curious narratives, the artist explains that she is simply reworking the means and processes of production:

The driving force of capitalism is fiction. It thrives on a form of storytelling that inflates the importance and value of objects and it works like a kind of magic: ‘if you buy this, you can become this’.1

In the video element of Mary’s cherries 2004, three voluptuous women perform a series of physical actions in claustrophobic chambers on three successive floors. Two of the women rapidly pedal exercise bikes to power a UV light, which promotes the growth of red fingernails on the third woman (Mary). The nails grow to full length within seconds and each is carefully cut. The clipping then drops to another labourer, who pounds and manipulates it. Once it is softened, the fingernail is passed through a hole in the floor to the next labourer, who massages and sculpts it into a sticky maraschino cherry.

The audio track features the visceral sounds of fingernails being snipped, a squeezing and squelching as the fingernails are moulded into cherries, and the repetitive whir of the peddled exercise bikes. It is broken by the women yelling one another’s name as the fingernail-turned-maraschino cherry is passed along the factory line. Rottenberg’s camera follows the movement of the production, which is spliced with close-ups of the women’s excessive bodies and elements of their work environments. Everything seems overwrought, from the ‘licks’ of stucco on the walls of their claustrophobic rooms, to the fleshiness of their bodies on the exercise bikes, to their flimsy plywood workbenches. Rottenberg transforms the factory line from a mechanical space to a feast of flesh.

Each of the characters in Mary’s cherries are in charge of their own means of production. The characters are played by real-life erotic female wrestlers, and the artist was particularly interested in the way this profession can provide a path to liberation:

. . . in their day jobs they rent out their bodies and talents, but they are very much in charge, it seems. They have personal websites; they don’t have pimps, they have their own savyiness [sic]. Their own bodies 100 percent.2

Rottenberg juxtaposes the depersonalised production line with the individuality of the workers, whose grotesquely sensual bodies are incorporated into the production of commodities. Their names — Mary, Rose, and Barbara — appear on their generic pink and blue uniforms. A self‑confessed voyeur, Rottenberg is interested in collaborating with exhibitionists in her works; by hiring people who seek an audience, she subverts the traditional power of the viewer’s gaze.3

Rather than developing storyboards before shooting her videos, Rottenberg’s works are developed through building a set. This material-driven approach is reflected in Mary’s cherries in the way elements of the video are made manifest in the installation itself, within which the video is housed on a CRT monitor. The walls of the installation are covered with stucco and its base is embellished with a brown hounds’-tooth carpet.

Mary’s cherries takes many common, overlooked and mundane elements of contemporary production and turns them into a seemingly bizarre narrative, presented in a fantastical environment. However, as Mika Rottenberg points out, she is not seeking to create something bizarre; she is simply pointing out how bizarre reality is.4

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Endnotes
1  The artist, quoted in Ann Demeester, ‘Simply Fantastic (Realism): Mika Rottenberg Responds to FAQS and FPPS’, in Mika Rottenberg, Gregory R. Miller & Co. and De Appel Arts Centre in association with M-Museum Leuven, New York, 2011, p.16.
2  The artist, quoted in Judith Hudson, ‘Mika Rottenberg in conversation with Judith Hudson’, BOMB, vol.113, 2010, p.27.
3  Robert Enright and Meeka Walsh, ‘Fetishizing the visual’, Border Crossings, vol.30, no.1, <http://gateway.library.qut.edu.au/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?dir ect=true&db=vth&AN=59589672&site=ehost-live>, viewed July 2013.
4  The artist, quoted in Demeester.