In Nikita Gale‘s ongoing RUINER series (2020–present), crowd-control fencing is entangled with concrete-dipped cord in elegant and uncomfortable sculptures. Here the artist turns toward absurdity to question the performativity of incarceration. Gale points to the ways in which technology affects human presence in performative settings, showing that technology not only functions as an extension or amplification of the body, but also as a means of transferring human labor through the body into the physical space, towards the viewer.