The Manufacturing of Spirits and Other Mechanical Wonders

The Cobra Museum presents the solo exhibition Mette Sterre: The Manufacturing of Spirits and Other Mechanical Wonders. The exhibition forms part of a new series in which contemporary artists, drawing inspiration from Cobra: More than Human, establish connections with the Cobra collection and its intellectual legacy.

In her work, Mette Sterre (Delft, 1983) combines performance, sculpture, body masks, robotics and installation. Her sculptures often have a physical quality, whilst her performances are created using objects, costumes and prosthetic extensions of the body. Organic and artificial forms merge: machines take on human characteristics and bodies transform into strange, sometimes grotesque creatures. In this way, Sterre explores not only where the body ends and the object begins, but also how technology and our environment determine how a body moves and behaves.

For the exhibition, Sterre conducted research into Coney Island during a residency in New York. In the amusement parks that sprang up there around 1900, visitors were immersed in artificial worlds of electric light, mechanical rides, mirrors and illusions. Technology was used there to evoke pleasure and excitement. Visitors did not merely watch the spectacle; they became a physical part of it: machines threw bodies off balance or brought them closer together. In Coney Island, Sterre recognises, on a larger scale, a question that is also central to her own work: what happens when technology actively shapes our physical experience?

Drawing on this research, Sterre draws an unexpected connection with Constants’ New Babylon. Although Coney Island and Constants’ utopian urban model arose from very different ideas, both explore the question of how an artificially designed environment can influence our bodies and behaviour. Sterre brings this idea into the present day. In her work, technology is not sleek or efficient, but rather soft, clumsy, funny and vulnerable. This creates a world in which body and machine constantly exchange characteristics with one another.