PROTEIN
An exhibition by Nina Beier and Simon Dybbroe Møller developed during their residency at Ses12naus
(July – October 2023)
Exhibition presented at La Carpintería, Ibiza
PROTEIN was a collaborative project by Nina Beier and Simon Dybbroe Møller, developed during their residency on Ibiza and conceived specifically for La Carpintería — an old carpenter’s workshop transformed into the Ses12naus exhibition space, located in the industrial area of Can Bufí. The project was curated by Elise Lammer.
The exhibition assembled a constellation of objects and images that traced the entanglement of global production systems, commodity aesthetics, and the surreal logic of contemporary life on the island. The artists staged a set of elements that operated simultaneously as sculpture, photography, and graphic material: 500 solar-powered plastic bugs, ordered from different factories in China; nine framed portraits of real estate agents, sourced online; and a poster reworking the logo of the club night “Ants” at Ushuaïa Ibiza.
Together, these components formed a sharp and fragmented portrait of a reality shaped by consumer culture, entertainment economies, and ecological crisis. The work moved fluidly between toys and housing speculation, swarm intelligence and human gatekeeping, factory production and leisure, sustainability and surface appearance. PROTEIN layered associations in an accelerating chain — a dense accumulation of references that mirrored the overload of contemporary capitalism: plastic and sound, advertising and horror, global warming and vacation, the housing crisis and nightlife.
As described by the artists:
“Imagine 500 solar powered plastic bugs ordered from different factories in China, 9 framed portraits of real estate agents culled from the internet and a poster repurposing the logo from the club night Ants at Ushuaïa in Ibiza. Sculpture and photograph and poster, bugs and houses and dancing, toys and the housing crisis and entertainment… global warming and representation and swarm intelligence… plastic and appearance and style…”
This statement — an excerpt from the project text written in July 2023 — captured the exhibition’s methodology: a continuous sequence of juxtaposed realities, where material objects became symbols of extraction, aspiration, spectacle, and collapse. By embedding the aesthetics of Ibiza’s luxury and leisure industries within larger global systems of labor, production, and environmental consequence, PROTEIN positioned the island as both a local site and a global symptom.
Artists
Nina Beier & Simon Dybbroe Møller
PROTEIN
Nina Beier (Denmark, 1975) works with found objects whose value has been shaped collectively across different time periods, generations, or global realities. Hybrid and unstable, the objects she selects become elastic motifs — continuously mutating, slipping between meanings, and remaining in a state of transformation. Interested in how material culture reflects the power structures society is built upon, Beier’s sculptural practice excavates objects that carry layered and often contradictory cultural codes. Her work unpacks the space between intention, production, distribution, trade, and use, tracing how these forces shift over time and reshape both objects and their perceived value.
Simon Dybbroe Møller (Denmark, 1976) thinks with and through things. His practice searches for objects that appear suspended in limbo — blurred, transitional, and caught between disparate conditions of existence. He is drawn to objects and images that seem to have almost invented themselves, acting, in his own words, as “nonverbal articulations of our collective subconscious.” Through photography and sculptural gestures, he investigates the relationship between our most fundamental sensate experiences and the increasing autonomy of representational media. At the core of his work is an ongoing inquiry into how we transform media — and how media transforms us.
Residency: PROTEIN
Contents
