Berenice Hernandez (b. 1982) works with sculptures, video, photography and performance. In her work she focuses on the importance of spaces, their foundations and the potential power they have over our society and the individual. Creating temporary and imaginary landscapes, to escape reality, to think about other possible futures. She was born in Mexico City where she started her ceramic training continuing to the Oslo National Academy of the Arts (KHiO) and graduated with a MFA from Konstfack, Stockholm 2022.

Detached 2022

Video and sculptures. Latex, paper, clay, thread and screws

The worker moves between machines. She keeps time, maintains numbers,monitors performance. Her mind is idle.It’s an act of removal. The individualsteps into the factory and becomes a worker. Separation from purpose issurvival and death in equal measures.She removes herself from herself,becomes a cast detached from itsoriginal.

Factories are about control, they areabout the tracking and managing ofbodies, of movements and numbers.
A drawing of a factory floor plan is arepresentation of this control. It’s anengineered abstraction distanced fromthe worker, removed from the physicaleffort of the body. By replicating thedrawings on sheets of latex they becomeremoved from this deattachement, andbrought closer to the body by the skinlike qualities of the latex.

But the replicas lack rigidity. They haveno internal structure. They are mereshells. But there’s beauty in that too.

Photos by Tina Stridfeldt

Films by Filip Tell