Sidsel Meineche Hansen’s curiosity in metalworking and casting lies past the fabric processes that she employs, incorporates, and typically makes specific reference to in her observe. The utilitarian objects, anthropomorphized intercourse toys and spiritual collectible figurines which can be the impetus for a number of of Hansen’s artworks usually discuss with the physiological results and sexual drives that manifest via labor and manufacturing. As such, these works usually fall into two camps: individually, handmade items corresponding to her not too long ago steel-forged and bronze wax forged sequence Hook (2023) based mostly on designs of rudimentary meat hooks, whereas her remake of moulds utilized in each industrial and artisanal casting are emblematic of the mass-produced replica of objects.

Seen throughout all her work, nevertheless, is a want to tug into focus the encircling context through which issues are made and the way they’re used. That is notable in two brief movies Maintenancer (2018) and Child Jesus (2023) made along with documentary filmmaker Therese Henningsen. Maintenancer is filmed in Bordoll, a German intercourse doll brothel, and paperwork the routine of a cleaner chargeable for their repairs; Child Jesus follows the every day lives of members of the Little Sisters of Jesus, a small neighborhood of nuns within the East of England, together with one sister who makes ornamental figures of child Jesus. Whereas worlds aside, these works each circle round symbolic objects of transaction and non secular devotion, attributes which Hansen likens to her personal up to date secular artwork observe.

Like Maybrey Foundry (2017), a 360 diploma pan of a foundry through which Hansen wax forged an earlier sequence, Hole Eyed (2017), Maintenancer and Child Jesus additionally contextualize accompanying sculptural items, every based mostly on moulds. In final yr’s exhibition “The Milk of Desires” on the Venice Biennial, Maintenancer was proven alongside Daddy Mould (2018), a fiberglass mould of a intercourse doll that the artist reverse-engineered by casting its authentic type to create its adverse. Whereas a readymade appropriates a preexisting object’s commodity standing, Daddy Mould factors to the worth of product design in a altering economic system of intercourse work geared in the direction of standardization. Hansen swaps the parental task from the ‘mothermould,’ a generally used time period in industrial mouldmaking with the patriarch by means of its title’s implied psychosexual relationship.

Non-reproductive parenting of one other type additionally underlies Child Mould (2023), for which Hansen recast an intricate, fifteen-part terracotta mould used to make one of many Little Sisters of Jesus’ collectible figurines. Within the movie, a sister speaks of dwelling a ‘non secular childhood’ through which God is guardian. In addition to the mould’s already womb-like resemblance and reproductive operate, the artist’s particular materials use of glass to remake it brings a couple of additional affiliation with the assisted fertility process In Vitro Fertilization (in vitro is Latin for ‘in glass’ and refers to medical procedures that happen outdoors of the physique). Child Mould conflates the elimination of sexual activity in organic replica with the virgin beginning of Jesus. Each Daddy Mould and Child Mould strip the mould of its reproductive operate and render it ineffective as an artwork object that craves possession as an alternative.

at Eduard Montassut, Paris
till October 7, 2023