Ellen Sturm Niz

Whimsically dystopian dioramas, housed in and surrounding weed-gummy tins, are presented by mannequin hands as their own independent universes that exist simply to delight, perplex, and beckon you. Plucked from my daydreams or excavated as fragments of memories, news events, and the assorted flotsam and jetsam floating in a brain, the subconscious free associates, colliding unrelated places and things — yet sometimes making suspiciously meaningful connections. Just as Dada was born from the chaos of World War I, its irreverence feels equally urgent today, when the political and social landscape in the U.S. and abroad often teeters toward the absurd.