POWERHOUSE
2024
SOLO EXHIBITION
RINGSTED GALLERIET, RINGSTED (DK)
DIMENSIONS VARIABLE
UV-PRINT ON ALUMINUM, ALUMINUM FRAMES, STEEL PIPES, ALUMINUM PIPES, JUMP STARTER CABLES, AED-PADS, CAR BATTERY, LEATHER RIBBONS, IGNITION FLUIDS, TENSION BELTS, BEADS
The word powerhouse refers to a power plant or energy center; an industrial facility where energy and electricity are produced and redistributed. However, the term powerhouse is also used to describe a person, especially a woman of great strength, potency, and dedication - the epitome of a contemporary woman with a family, career, and a well-kept appearance. A battery is a portable energy center, an indispensable foundation for modern life. Similarly, the human body can be seen as a portable power station, a battery that must be recharged daily to function optimally. In the exhibition ‘Powerhouse’, Miriam Kongstad utilizes the battery as a metaphor, particularly for the enormous strength and power of the female body. A body that persistently exists in a world characterized by unrelenting inequality of power structures, economic conditions, health industries, and socio-political systems.
Both the battery, the power plant, and the body share the inherent tension between potential and risk. The potential for enormous energy transformation, and the risk of total meltdown. Life and death. The power plant provides energy and power to our society; the battery makes us mobile and global; the body transforms nourishment into action and brings new lives into the world. But a power plant can also overheat and create irreparable disasters. Batteries run dry, are discarded, and replaced by another, while their minerals are mined under inhumane labor conditions. The human body burns out, falls ill, and ages. Kongstad is precisely interested in these intersections, where high voltage quivers with intensity - in childbirth, eroticism, nerve endings, first aid, sprint running, and the tightening of the corset.
‘Powerhouse’ unites cold, modernist aesthetics with the sensitivity of the body and trembling bursts of power. The exhibition consists of 20 photo collages transferred to aluminum creating a pictorial universe of batteries, power stations, starter cables, and power grids, fused with nipples, births, sprinters, first aids, and corsets. The wall pieces are contrasted by a series of steel sculptures in a formal, industrial style reminiscent of batteries, upscaled to human dimensions. With all their gravitas and formality, they are placed directly on the floor, resting, charging, leaking, threatening and vital.
PHOTOS BY MORTEN JACOBSEN