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Mika Rottenberg
Mika Rottenberg
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Mika Rottenberg (Hebrew: מיקה רוטנברג; born 1976) is a contemporary Argentine born U.S. based video artist who lives and works in New York.[1] Rottenberg is best known for her video and installation work that often "investigates the link between the female body and production mechanisms".[2] Her work has been exhibited both nationally and internationally.

Early life

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Mika Rottenberg was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina in 1976. Rottenberg's family relocated to Israel in 1977. In 1998, she attended HaMidrasha School of Art, Beit Berl College in Israel. In 2000, Rottenberg moved to New York to complete 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.[1] She was represented by Andrea Rosen Gallery in New York City until the gallery closed its doors in 2017. She was also represented by Galerie Laurent Godin in Paris.[3] As of 2019, she is represented by Hauser & Wirth.[4]

Work

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Rottenberg's video works feature women with various physical eccentricities, such as being very tall, large-bodied, or muscular. In the videos, these women perform physical acts that serve as an allegory for the human condition in post-modern times. Her videos are inspired by women who advertise their unusual characteristic online to be utilized for hire. "She hires women who in some form or another, use their body to profit in some way, and she is interested in how these bodies are marginalized and how "women's labor has been marginalized and almost invisible throughout history." "Her work explicitly concerns interactions between bodies and machines and 'the idea of ownership generally'."[5] "Her works allegorize the increasing capitalization of biological life itself: not what labors produce but what bodies consist of, grow, secrete, and reproduce….by exploring relations between immaterial goods, bodily by-products, and manufactured products, Rottenberg exposes and playfully transgresses the divisions of race, gender, and geography that underlie the post-Fordist world system".[2] She describes her work as "social Surrealism" and "a spiritual kind of Marxism."[6] She strives to "... give space and a stage to women who don't always obey gender and conventional beauty expectations."[7]

Significant works

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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.

In Tropical Breeze (2004), champion bodybuilder Heather Foster drives a converted truck that functions as a shop, packaging her sweat. In the back of the truck, dancer Felicia Ballos pedals a makeshift device, picking up tissues and using gum to stick them to a clothesline, transferring them to Heather, who uses them to collect her sweat for packaging and later for sale.[8]

Dough (2005-2006) watches Raqui, a size-acceptance activist and frequent collaborator of Rottenberg's as she cries tears that evaporate into steam, causing dough to rise.[7] The dough is then pulled and pushed through holes into multiple rooms by Tall Kat, a skinny, 6'9" woman who can reach from room to room. Through their actions, a unit that measures labor is created.[8]

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.[9] Rottenberg's work was showcased at the Whitney Biennial 2008.[10]

Squeeze (2010) is a video shot on location at a lettuce farm in Arizona and a rubber plant farm 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.[5]

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."[11][12]

In Ponytails (2014), a pair of kinetic sculptures, one blonde and one dark-haired, extend and flip frantically through two glory-hole-like openings in separate gallery walls.[6]

Bowls, Balls, Souls, Holes (2014) is a video where bingo, stretching skin, clothespins, a dripping air conditioner, and melting polar ice caps collide in time and space. "You feel that you're on the verge of comprehending a cosmic mystery."[13]

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."

Ceiling Fan #4 (2016) is viewed through narrow, horizontal openings in a gallery wall. Inside, ceiling fans turn, illuminated by pastel light.

Cosmic Generator (2017), is a video installation shot partly in Mexicali, along the U.S. Mexico border. It follows workers in cramped spaces performing absurd tasks such as crushing lightbulbs, accompanied by a soundtrack of electronic buzzes and blips. The viewer is shown a series of tunnels, ostensibly linking a variety of workshops and restaurants shown later in the twenty-six-minute piece.[6]

Spaghetti Blockchain (2019) was premiered at the New Museum in New York, in a show called Mika Rottenberg: Easypieces. This piece "explores ancient and new ideas about materialism and considers how humans both comprise and manipulate matter."[14] The video consists of female throat singers from Tuva, Tyva Kyzy, ASMR-esque videos of colors and sizzling goo, a potato-farm, and interior shots of a Genevan Hall. Rottenberg places these scenes in "a kind of superfluous factory of her devising, whose primary product seems to be imagery that's simultaneously pleasurable and queasily troubling."[15]

Infinite Earth Foundation

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Infinite Earth Foundation is a philanthropic non-profit foundation founded in 2008 by Mika Rottenberg and artist Alona Harpaz. Their goal is to produce photographic prints to sell "at a cheaper price to people who are not necessarily art collectors". For their first project, they helped raise money to improve the working conditions at a hand-looming center in Chamba, a north Indian village.[2]

Awards

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In 2019, Rottenberg won the Kurt Schwitters Prize. Kurt Schwitters was a German painter who died in 1948. The prize was founded in 1982 by the Niedersachsische Sparkassenstiftung, a musical club in Hanover, Germany. Past Kurt Schwitters Prize winners include Theaster Gates (2017) and Pierre Huyghe (2015). "In a joint statement, the jury members said: "The imaginative video works and installations by Mika Rottenberg intertwine documentary with fiction in surreal allegories of today's life. Their ingenious visual narratives illuminate the interconnected relationships between economies, geographic areas, forms of work, and added value. . . . In her interdisciplinary-experimental artistic approach and in the exploration of the interweaving of the machine and the body, the sensitivity of groundbreaking artist Kurt Schwitters resounds. This makes her the ideal candidate for the Kurt Schwitters Prize."[16]

In 2018, Rottenberg was invited as guest artist to the physics laboratory CERN.[17]

In 2018, Rottenberg received the James Dicke Contemporary Artist Prize from the Smithsonian American Art Museum (SAAM).[18]

In 2014, Rottenberg received the Ruth Ann and Nathan Perlmutter Artist-in-Residence Award at The Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University.

In 2011, Rottenberg took part in Sommerakademie im Zentrum Paul Klee, Bern, curated by Pipilotti Rist at the Planete Doc Film Festival Selection in Warsaw.

in 2010, Rottenberg received The Flaherty International Film Seminar Fellowship.

In 2010, Rottenberg was part of the New Vision Programme Selection at CPH: DOX Film Festiva in Copenhagen.

In 2009, Rottenberg was a 5x5 Castello 09 Prize Finalist at Espai D'art Contemporani de Castello in Spain.

In 2006, Rottenberg received the Cartier Award, in conjunction with Frieze Art Fair in New York, NY.[2]

Selected solo exhibitions

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Selected group exhibitions

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  • Galleri Bo Bjerggaard, 'Contemporary Obsessions', Copenhagen, Denmark (2019)
  • Contemporary Art Center, 'Resilient Future', Thessaloniki, Greece (2018)
  • Art Basel Cities, 'Hopscotch', Buenos Aires, Argentina (2018)
  • US Pavilion, 'Venice Architecture Biennale', Venice, Italy (2018)
  • The Met Breuer, 'The Body Politic', New York NY (2017)
  • 2015 Venice Biennale, 'All the World's Futures' (cur. Okwui Enwezor), Venice, Italy (2015)
  • The Jewish Museum, 'Sights and Sounds. Global Film and Video', New York NY (2014)
  • Taipei Biennial 2014 (cur. Nicolas Bourriaud), Taipei, Taiwan (2014)
  • 13th Istanbul Biennial (cur. Fulya Erdemci), Istanbul, Turkey (2013)
  • Garage Projects at the 54th Venice Biennale, 'Commercial Break' (cur. Neville Wakefield), Venice, Italy (2011)
  • Guggenheim Museum, curated by Nancy Spector and David Van Der Leer, New York NY (2010)
  • 2nd Bienal del Fin del Mundo, 'Intemperie' (cur. Alfons Hug), Ushuaia, Argentina (2009)
  • Whitney Museum of American Art, 'Whitney Biennial 2008', New York NY (2008)
  • Tate Modern, 'The Irresistible Force' (cur. Ben Borthwick and Kerryn Greenberg), London, United Kingdom (2007)
  • 2nd Moscow Biennale (cur, Nicholas Bourriaud), Moscow, Russia (2007)[1]

Collections

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References

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[edit]
Revisions and contributorsEdit on WikipediaRead on Wikipedia
from Grokipedia
Mika Rottenberg is an Argentine-born contemporary artist known for her immersive video installations, sculptures, and films that probe the mechanics of global labor, commodity production, and the absurdities of hyper-capitalism. Born in Buenos Aires in 1976, she immigrated to Israel with her family in 1977 and was raised in Tel Aviv before relocating to New York in 2000. She earned a BFA from the School of Visual Arts in 2000 and an MFA from Columbia University in 2004, establishing herself in the city's art scene. Rottenberg's practice blends documentary footage shot in real-world sites of production—such as pearl factories in China or border regions—with staged studio sequences to construct elaborate, often surreal narratives that link disparate economies and human experiences. These works are typically presented in theatrical architectural installations incorporating physical objects from the filmed environments, such as pearls, plastic flowers, or deflated pool toys, alongside standalone sculptures. Her early videos, including Mary’s Cherries (2004), feature exaggerated labor processes performed by women with unconventional bodies, highlighting the fetishization and mechanization of production. Later projects like Cosmic Generator (2017) and Spaghetti Blockchain (2019) expand her inquiry into materiality, invasive species, and the circular economy, using visceral sounds and seductive visuals to draw viewers into critiques of consumption and exploitation. In 2022, Rottenberg co-directed the feature-length film REMOTE with Mahyad Tousi, which premiered at Tate Modern and the New York Film Festival and further experiments with narrative structure within her artistic framework. Her work has been exhibited internationally at institutions including the New Museum, Palais de Tokyo, Kunsthaus Bregenz, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, and Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, and is held in collections at the Museum of Modern Art, Guggenheim Museum, Whitney Museum of American Art, and Tate. She has received awards such as the Kurt Schwitters Prize in 2019 and the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s James Dicke Contemporary Artist Prize in 2018. Rottenberg lives and works in New York, where her ongoing practice continues to engage with themes of materiality, authenticity, and the contradictions inherent in contemporary global systems.

Early Life and Education

Early Life

Mika Rottenberg was born in 1976 in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Her family relocated to Israel in 1977 during her early childhood, and she spent her formative years there, raised in Tel Aviv. She later moved to New York for her education.

Education

In 1998, Mika Rottenberg studied at Hamidrasha, Beit Berl College of Arts in Israel. She moved to New York in 2000 to attend the School of Visual Arts, where she earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) degree that same year. Rottenberg continued her graduate studies at Columbia University in New York and received her Master of Fine Arts (MFA) degree in 2004.

Artistic Career

Early Career and Breakthrough Works

Mika Rottenberg completed her MFA at Columbia University in 2004 and quickly established herself in the New York art scene through video installations that incorporated architectural elements and featured female performers with distinctive physical traits engaged in exaggerated, repetitive labor processes. These early works often presented absurdist production cycles within confined, theatrical spaces that viewers could enter, blending filmed sequences with sculptural components to create immersive environments. Rottenberg sourced many performers online, selecting individuals whose bodies already commodified their own eccentricities, and designed the sets to accommodate their physicality rather than the reverse. Her breakthrough began with Mary's Cherries (2004), a 5:50-minute color video with sound accompanied by digital C-prints, depicting three women in a vertical gravity-powered chain: one pedals to grow long red fingernails, another flattens them through massage, and the third shapes them into maraschino cherries. This work was first shown in Special Projects at P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center in Queens, New York. Tropical Breeze (2004) followed, set in a converted truck functioning as a mobile factory, where a bodybuilder sweats while driving and a dancer collects the sweat-soaked tissues with her toes and packages them as “Tropical Breeze Lemon Scented Moist Tissues.” It appeared in the group exhibition Greater New York 2005 at P.S.1. In 2006, Dough presented a plus-sign-shaped structure in which a performer’s allergic reaction to pollen produces tears that fall through holes onto a hot tile, creating steam that raises dough, which is then kneaded, shaped into units, and vacuum-packed by other women in a perpetual cycle. Rottenberg exhibited Dough in solo presentations at Nicole Klagsbrun Gallery in New York and at KW Institute for Contemporary Art in Berlin, marking her first solo exhibition in Germany. Cheese (2008) shifted to a circular format, with long-haired women in white dresses “milking” their hair to produce cheese amid additional surreal elements such as sneezing rabbits and herded goats. By 2010, Squeeze synthesized her earlier approaches by linking documentary footage from a rubber plant in India and a lettuce farm in Arizona with staged scenes of women in a mechanized “makeup factory” set, producing a grotesque composite cube of rubber, decomposing lettuce, and blush through absurd global production chains. The work debuted in solo exhibitions at Mary Boone Gallery (in collaboration with Nicole Klagsbrun Gallery) in New York and as New Work: Mika Rottenberg at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, where viewers navigated a mazelike installation that amplified its disorienting effect. Represented early by Nicole Klagsbrun Gallery, these projects established Rottenberg’s signature blend of humor, bodily exaggeration, and critique of commodified labor.

Major Installations and Video Works

Mika Rottenberg's mid-career video installations from 2011 to 2019 create immersive environments that fuse documentary-style footage of global production chains with absurdist, surreal narratives critiquing labor, materiality, and transnational commerce. In Seven (2011), a collaboration with Jon Kessler commissioned by the Performa biennial, seven performers representing chakras rode stationary bikes to produce chromatic sweat collected and distilled in a sauna-like structure, while synchronized video depicted a rural community in Botswana, metaphorically linking urban bodily exertion to distant origins of humankind through physical labor and material transformation. NoNoseKnows (2015), premiered at the Venice Biennale in a purpose-built room recreating a pearl factory entrance, centers on footage shot in Zhuji, China, showing female workers inserting irritants into oysters and extracting and sorting cultured pearls, intercut with a tall Western supervisor figure whose sneezes, triggered by blown flower scents, generate heaping plates of food in an absurdist parallel between human bodily expulsion, oyster secretion, and industrial commodity overabundance. The installation's 50 Kilos variant places a 50-kilogram sack of pearls just outside the viewing doorway, emphasizing the tangible output of exploited labor. Cosmic Generator (2017), commissioned by Skulptur Projekte Münster, constructs an architectural tunnel leading to a 26-minute single-channel film depicting a fictional subterranean network connecting a dollar store and Chinese restaurant in the U.S.-Mexico border towns of Calexico and Mexicali with an overflowing wholesale market in Yiwu, China, using close-up textures, hypnotic sounds, and vivid colors to allegorize the absurdities of global trade, geopolitics, and capitalism's relentless transformation of materials. Spaghetti Blockchain (2019), debuting in the New Museum's mid-career survey Easy Pieces and later shown at MCA Chicago, is a 4K video installation with 7.1 surround sound that juxtaposes footage of Tuvan women's throat singing on Siberian steppes, interiors of the Large Hadron Collider near Geneva, mechanical potato harvesting, and ASMR-style sensory sequences, forming a satirical "superfluous factory" that probes ancient and contemporary materialism, labor, technology, and the eerie abstractions of blockchain and late capitalism.

Recent Projects and Collaborations

In 2022, Mika Rottenberg collaborated with filmmaker Mahyad Tousi on her first feature-length film, REMOTE. The work was commissioned by Artangel in the United Kingdom, the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Denmark, and Moderna Museet in Sweden. REMOTE premiered at Tate Modern in London and screened at the New York Film Festival, with additional presentations including the European premiere at Moderna Museet and screenings at institutions such as MOCA. The 92-minute film, shot in 2K resolution with 5.1 audio, constructs a solarpunk world that chronicles environmental and social themes through a narrative blending realism and speculation. Since 2023, Rottenberg has developed Lampshares, an ongoing project that produces functional lamp sculptures from invasive bittersweet vines and milled reclaimed household plastic. The works play on the term "shareholders," positioning buyers as participants in a metaphorical factory system where consumption fuels ongoing production, extending her critique of capitalist cycles and environmental degradation. These anthropomorphic lamps, often incorporating glowing plastic elements resembling spores or fungi emerging from vines, emphasize circular economy principles by repurposing waste materials into utilitarian yet sculptural objects. Editions of the Lampshares have been produced and offered through galleries, reflecting Rottenberg's shift toward sustainable fabrication techniques in her recent sculptural practice.

Artistic Practice and Themes

Conceptual Focus and Influences

Mika Rottenberg's practice centers on the absurdity and contradictions inherent in global capitalist systems, particularly the extraction of value from labor and natural resources. She explores how contemporary production processes accelerate natural cycles in grotesque ways, creating dissonance between seductive, beautiful surfaces and the often exploitative or alienating conditions behind them. Rottenberg describes her approach as reflecting on reality "in a grotesque way," where beauty and horror coexist, prompting questions about whether something remains beautiful if made through ugly means. Her work frequently draws from real global production sites—such as pearl factories in China or markets along the U.S.-Mexico border—blending them with fabricated studio elements to reveal hidden networks of labor and the surreal distances products travel before reaching consumers. This results in scenarios that blur fact and fiction, portraying intimate yet alienated relationships between people and the goods they consume, often involving bodies as sites of production in a "spiritual kind of Marxism" where human labor functions as a means within dizzying global consumption systems. Rottenberg stages networks of women performing repetitive or surreal tasks in circus-like or exaggerated roles, emphasizing cyclical processes and the psychological weight of physical existence under hyper-capitalism. She rejects rigid theoretical frameworks, instead drawing from direct, primal experiences to highlight connections between the organic, mechanical, and synthetic, as well as humanity's role as an irritant to nature. Her aim is to capture "the abstract experience of being alive" and transform it into tangible forms that evoke both pleasure and unease.

Media, Techniques, and Installation Approach

Mika Rottenberg's practice combines film, architectural installation, and sculpture to create immersive, multi-dimensional works. She draws on traditions of cinema and sculpture by filming at real-world locations associated with systems of production and commerce, such as pearl factories or border towns, while also capturing footage on elaborate sets constructed in her studio. Through post-production editing, she links disparate geographies, objects, and activities into seamless yet subversive visual narratives that blend documentary elements with staged fiction. Her video works are presented within theatrical installations that incorporate physical objects drawn directly from the scenarios depicted on screen, including sacks of pearls, deflated pool toys, plastic flowers, and sizzling frying pans, which function as extensions of the video realm and appear to open portals between the viewer's space and the work's internal logic. These installations often take the form of constructed architectural environments, such as mazelike passages, built in collaboration with carpenters and engineers to guide viewers through immersive spatial experiences. Many projects are further accompanied by standalone sculptural works that maintain allegorical connections to the videos. In her process, Rottenberg shoots extensive footage of participants in evolving sets, often retaining unscripted moments, before condensing it into the final edited videos.

Exhibitions

Selected Solo Exhibitions

Mika Rottenberg has presented her work in numerous solo exhibitions at leading international institutions and galleries, often debuting new video installations and sculptures that explore themes of labor, global production, and materialism. In 2019, her exhibition Easypieces at the New Museum in New York marked her first solo museum presentation in the city. The show premiered the video installation Spaghetti Blockchain (2019), which examined ancient and contemporary ideas about matter and human manipulation of the material world, while also featuring earlier works such as NoNoseKnows (2015) and Cosmic Generator (2017). It later traveled to the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. In 2021, Rottenberg exhibited Bowls Balls Souls Holes at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Humlebæk, Denmark. Her 2018 solo exhibition at Kunsthaus Bregenz in Austria was her first institutional solo show in the country and focused on her characteristic video installations that address global commodity circulation, labor under capitalism, and the absurdities of production processes. In 2016, at Palais de Tokyo in Paris, her second solo exhibition in France included major video works such as NoNoseKnows (2015) and Bowls Balls Souls Holes (2014), alongside new pieces produced specifically for the venue and several sculptures depicting anatomical or everyday elements. Recent solo presentations with Hauser & Wirth include shows in Zurich in 2021 and Los Angeles in 2022, as well as Vibrant Matter at Hauser & Wirth Menorca in 2025.

Selected Group Exhibitions and Biennials

Mika Rottenberg has participated in numerous influential international biennials and group exhibitions, contributing to global conversations on contemporary art through her distinctive video installations and sculptural environments. Her involvement in major biennials began early in her career, including the Busan Biennale in 2006. She was featured in the Whitney Biennial at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York in 2008. Rottenberg also took part in the 13th Istanbul Biennial in 2013 and the Taipei Biennial in 2014. She presented her work at the 56th Venice Biennale in 2015, curated by Okwui Enwezor under the title All the World's Futures. In 2017, Rottenberg was commissioned for Skulptur Projekte Münster, where she debuted an iteration of Cosmic Generator. Subsequent participations include the 16th Istanbul Biennial in 2019, the Taipei Biennial in 2020, and the Busan Biennale in 2022. These group contexts have positioned her practice alongside diverse international artists, amplifying her explorations of labor, consumption, and absurdity within broader curatorial frameworks.

Awards and Recognition

Major Awards and Prizes

Mika Rottenberg has received major recognition through prestigious awards that highlight her innovative work in video, sculpture, and installation art. In 2018, she was named the winner of the James Dicke Contemporary Artist Prize by the Smithsonian American Art Museum, a $25,000 award given to an artist under 50 who has produced a significant body of work and demonstrates exceptional creativity. The prize, now in its 12th iteration and supported by The James F. Dicke Endowment for Contemporary Art, was selected by a jury that praised Rottenberg's ability to represent overlooked figures and aspects of the human condition, particularly through explorations of women's labor, global capitalism, and connections between disparate economies and geographies in intimate yet grotesque, surreal, and humorous ways. In 2019, Rottenberg received the Kurt Schwitters Prize, a biennial award that recognizes artists for significant contributions to contemporary art. Administered in association with the Sprengel Museum Hannover, the prize includes a €25,000 cash award and a solo exhibition at the museum. This honor follows previous recipients such as Theaster Gates and Pierre Huyghe, underscoring Rottenberg's established position in the field.

Collections

Public and Institutional Collections

Mika Rottenberg's works are held in the permanent collections of numerous prominent museums and institutions, reflecting her significant impact on contemporary art. Institutions including the Brooklyn Museum, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, and the Whitney Museum of American Art hold her pieces in their permanent collections. Specific examples include NoNoseKnows (50 Kilos variant) at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and multiple video works such as Mary's Cherries and Tropical Breeze at the Museum of Modern Art. The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden has also acquired Tropical Breeze as part of recent expansions to its collection. These holdings underscore the broad institutional recognition of her video installations and sculptural works.

References

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