Power Play

Power Play sets symbols of power against commodified objects of desire, and looks at the tension between them. Mika contrasts the ominous and the alluring, using pink polished chrome, acrylic fingernails, and latex finishes to build a surreal, dark hyperreality.

During the 2022 Venice Biennale, Mika ran a guerrilla poster campaign of bright metallic sea mines cresting above the waterline of the Grand Canal, pasted over existing advertising in and around the city. She later fabricated the mines as sculptures in 2022, during her residency at JAX District, Diriyah, in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

The work fuses things that seem opposed, turning handbags and sex toys into fetish objects with a post-feminist, military-industrial satire. How is power created, sold, kept, and destroyed? How does it change hands beyond physical possession?