Ruby Reding (b.1995, UK) is an artist and researcher based in the Netherlands, working with sculpture, poetry and archives to re-attune our relationship to mineral and metal extraction. Her works image and interrupt the colonial infrastructures and temporalities of dominant and violent governance that fuel mining, energy and commodity production. Through forms of relation, abstraction and intimacy, she asks what persists against the British pillaging of land and might be salvaged from its toxic afterlives.
Taking place in metal workshops, through sensory fieldwork and research collaborations, her works enquire into our psychic and relentless pursuit for strength beyond the capacity of our bodies and organic life. Recent projects focus on aluminium industry as it emerged from the British Empire during WWI, rare earth magnets including neodymium for wind turbine production and tungsten for military warfare. Often working in collaboration with scientists, academics and technicians, she conducts fieldwork to sites that are often out-of-sight to the global public or bound around carceral architecture.
Get in touch at rubyreding@gmail.com if you are interested in a collaboration, coffee, conversation.