The Brooklyn Rail

What do two mechanical bulls, a pair of size 56 sneakers, and the world’s largest seed pod have in common? They are all the materials of Danish artist Nina Beier, who has a reputation as something of a hoarder. At the press view of her solo show Parts at Kiasma in Helsinki—her largest in the Nordics to date—Beier confessed she doesn’t really have the collector instinct.

Beier periodically fills her studio in Copenhagen with a particular kind of object to help her get to grips with a raw material—its associations, its meanings. Beier questions what values we place upon these objects and how those values might change when objects are exchanged. Eventually, some of these will become part of her sculptures, which typically bring two elements together, while the rest might end up on eBay.

In the case of the lurching bulls with milk cartons on their backs (Beast [2018/2024]), this juxtaposition seems a little absurd. A bull cannot produce milk, and usually has a human rider, if any at all. The cartons contain a breast-milk substitute made from processed cow’s milk that speaks to the commodification of animal products, which the bull tries to shake off. It’s curious to remember that humans are the only species to drink another’s milk and that apparently Finland consumes the most milk in the world per capita.

There are other curious readings to be made from these Finnish surroundings. For the performance Drama (2019/2024), in which two people cry into glasses filled with tears, Beier briefed the actors on what to do if the public tried to console them. The performers reassured Beier that Finns—known for their reserve—were unlikely to say anything. When Beier’s bronze fountain of weeping females, Women & Children (2022), was initially unveiled on the New York High Line, visitors might have connected their tears to the state of reproductive rights in America, but in Finland this gathering has different associations: the country actually loosened its abortion laws in 2023.

Parts opens in counterpart to a show at CAPC Musée d'art Contemporain de Bordeaux. In Helsinki, Beier explains, our attention is upon states of bodily exhaustion and collapse. These sensations are pertinent to the mounds of soil, topped with Coco Fesse nuts from the Seychelles that resemble protruding bottoms, as if we have literally buried our heads in the sand (Female Nude [2016]). The Coco Fesse is so valuable that it is more often collected than left to reproduce, so the fertility of the voluptuous female body emerging from the sand is undercut. Another symbol of fertility is the egg, examples of which are placed at intervals on a winding staircase in Nest (2022). Some are petrified, some are purely decorative, and some are the kind placed in coops to encourage chickens to lay eggs.

The potent residue of the body is apparent in Auto (2017), in which remote-controlled cars are stuffed with human hair. Wigs have a practical use while also being representations of hair, revealing the underlying tussle between image and object in Beier’s work. Elsewhere, beards and mustaches once used in the film industry line the museum walls, placed wryly at crotch height (Parts [2023]). The status symbol of hair, which we make such efforts to grow, remove, and prune, plays a role in both Auto and Parts—flapping ridiculously out the window of a toy car or detached from an actor’s face, suggesting a blow to the ego and virility.

Manual Therapy’s (2016/2024) massage chairs filled with a mess of electronic waste, coins, and leftovers from the dental industry are a nod to the absent human body. The pulsating massage action is strangely sensual and conjures the hair and skin left behind by the user in the chairs’ leather crevices. There’s something equally visceral about the installation of porcelain sinks, whose gleaming plug holes are stuffed with cigars in Plug (2018/2024).

The corporeal is also apparent in the pair of size 56 sneakers, slathered with synthetic sweat—used to test a fabric’s robustness—and synthetic tears to treat dry eyes (Human Resource Industries [2013]). This pool of liquid threatens to spoil the white carpet beneath China’s (2015) cluster of porcelain dogs and vases. Bite marks have been taken out of the ceramics, like a feral bite out of the lucrative porcelain industry. Crisper mouthfuls have been taken from the chocolate bars placed on pieces of asphalt in Mars (2018). The Mars bars complement the faecal protrusions in the sinks: what goes in must come out.

Beier delights in the interpretation of her objects. With endless meanings and relationships to be unpacked, an encounter with her sculptures is undeniably joyful, inviting stories at each turn that are coloured by their new surroundings and our own twisted imaginations.