Claire Fontaine is a feminist conceptual art persona created in Paris in 2004 by Fulvia Carnevale and James Thornhill, an Italian-British artist duo who declared themselves her "assistants". Since 2018 Claire Fontaine lives and works in Palermo and has a studio in the historical centre of the Kalsa near Piazza Magione.
After lifting her name from a popular brand of French school notebooks and stationery, Claire Fontaine declared herself a readymade artist and began to elaborate a version of neo-conceptual art that often looks like other people's work. Claire Fontaine translated into English means "Clear Fountain" and can also be conceptually linked to the artwork Fountain by Marcel Duchamp, known as the most famous readymade.
Work
Claire Fontaine uses the concept of the readymade as a way of criticising "production" disguised as a creation of more and more artefacts that are desirable because they superficially appear as new. Generally she works with appropriation on a formal level and she hijacks contents, using sculpture, installation, video and painting to create an emotionally loaded criticism of the author and the forms of authority at this stage of capitalism. This aesthetic approach that she describes as "expropriation", a way of giving an existential use value to pre-existing objects and artworks, also addresses the general crisis of singularity, which she describes as the individual and collective impossibility to give a meaning to one's life under the current political circumstance and the systematic surveillance, repression and countless limitations of our freedom. Claire Fontaine prefers to integrate the existing art circuit to create complicities and foster change which entails partaking in the mechanisms and subjects of the art industry including collectors, dealers and institutions.
In an Interview with Circa Art Magazine in 2008 she states: "I think forming gangs, mafias, collectives, networks, bands of people is a way to survive in the hostile capitalist system and then eventually a way to become a pressure group, in order to transform these particular conditions."
Writing and text based pieces play an important role in Claire Fontaine's work. She distributes texts in her exhibitions and she uses different registers in her writing such as poetry, critical theory, essays and manifestos. The artist criticises the hierarchy between visual and verbal expression.
In February 2020 she was invited by Maria Grazia Chiuri to create the mise-en-scène for Dior's Autumn/Winter 2020 collection for Paris Fashion Week which took place in the Les Tuileries. The artist used the catwalk to perform an operation of Institutional Critique investing the floor and the ceiling; she presented Newsfloor (Le Monde Pixelisé) (2020) and several large suspended LED signs stating for example: Patriarchy Kills Love, When women strike the world stops, Feminine beauty is a ready-made or Patriarchy = Climate emergency.
Claire Fontaine's work, "Foreigners Everywhere" was chosen as the official title for the 2024 Venice Biennale, where a series of her neon sign sculptures of the words "foreigners everywhere" was also displayed in multiple languages at the Biennale for the first time under the arches of the Arsenale, looking out to the Grand Canal.
Monographs
Newsfloor, Jaleh Mansoor (Author), Anita Chari (Author), Walther König, (01.01.2020) Viaggio in Sicilia, Free Energy, Vito Planeta (Author), Valentina Bruschi (Author), Leonardo Sciascia (Author), Donatien Grau (Author), Planeta, (2019) Foreigners Everywhere by Hal Foster (Author), Bernard Blistène (Author), Nicolas Liucci-Goutnikov (Author), Letizia Ragalia (Introduction), Walther König, Köln; Bilingual edition (31/03/ 2013) Economies, Ruba Katrib, Tom McDonough, Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami, (June 3, 2010)
Books
Human Strike and the Art of Creating Freedom, Hal Foster (Forward), Semiotext(e), Dec. 2020 Lo sciopero umano e l'arte di creare la libertà (Italian), Ilaria Bussoni (Forward) DeriveApprodi, 2017, La Grève humaine: et l'art de créer la liberté, Diaphanes, 2020 The Human Strike Has Already Begun & Other Essays, Mute, 2013. Print ; eBook Notas sobre économia libidinal, MUSAC, 2011, edited by Maria Ines Rodriguez Some Instructions for the Sharing of Private Property, One Star Press, 2011 Vivre, Vaincre, Editions Dilecta, 2009
Writings
Towards a Theory of Magic Materialism, Vers une théorie du matérialisme magique, Diaphanes, Issue 8/9 Winter 2019/20 Making Life (im)possible in Jens Hoffmann, In the Meantime. Speculations on Art, Curating, and Exhibitions, Sternberg Press, 2020, The Visitor as a Commercial Partner: Notes on the 58th Venice Biennale, E-flux Journal No. 102 – September 2019 L'anno in cui la paura andò in sciopero in È solo l'inizio. Rifiuto, affetti, creatività nel lungo '68, edited by I. Bussoni, N. Martino, Ombre Corte, 2018, If our Lives are Black. On Angela Davis and Gina Dent's conference at La Maison de l'Amérique Latine, Paris, May Quarterly Journal, #.17, 14 March 2017 Boredom, edited by Tom McDonough, Documents of Contemporary Art, 2017, 1977. L'anno dello sciopero umano, Cultura, Il manifesto, 05.04.2017 Our Common Critical Condition, E-flux Journal No. 73 – 05. 2016 Weed and the Practice of Freedom, May Quarterly Journal, #.16, 2016 Towards a Canonic Freedom, Texte zur Kunst, Issue 100, 2015 We Are All Clitoridian Women: Notes on Carla Lonzi's Legacy, E-flux Journal No. 47 – September 2013 Krebber in Bordeaux, Texte zur Kunst Issue 89, 2013 Invisible Curators, Texte zur Kunst, Issue 86, 2012 Draft for aesthetic subjects anaesthetic object, Flashart, January–February 2010 Entrée en matière, May Quarterly Journal, #.4. 06. 2010 Toward an Imageless Political Education, Diacritics, a review of contemporary criticism, Johns Hopkins University Press, Vol. 39 no.23, , Fall 2009 The Emancipated Reader, May Quarterly Journal, #.1 06. 2009 Human strike within the field of libidinal economy, Descent to Revolution, edited by James Voorhies, pp. 144–151, Bureau for Open Culture, 2009 Preface to Coco Fusco, Petit manuel de torture à l'usage des femmes-soldats, Les Prairies Ordinaires, Paris
Interviews
L'immanenza del linguaggio: un dialogo con Claire Fontaine, Anita Chari, Simone Ciglia, Flashart Italia, June 2020 L'arte di essere libere, Interview with Eva Morletto, Grazia, no. 23 21.05.2020 Claire Fontaine Collective Capital, Interview with Evrim Oralkan, Collecteurs, March 2020 Pretend to be dead, An Interview with Claire Fontaine, Kyra Kordoski, White Fungus, 2015 Giving Shape to Painful Things, Interview Andrew Culp and Ricky Crano, Radical Philosophy, RP175 (Sept/Oct 2012) Claire Fontaine. La nostra Italia bruciata che non-cambia mai, Laura Larcan, La Repubblica, 3/2/2012 Grève humaine (interrompue), a conversation between Fulvia Carnevale and John Kelsey, May Quarterly Journal, No. 4 March 2010 In Life There is No Purity, Only Struggle, Interview with Bart van der Heide, Metropolis M magazine (February/March 2009) Acts of Freedom, Interview with Niels Van Tomme, Arts and Papers 33.06 (September 2009) The Glue and the Wedge: The Cases of Claire Fontaine and Canell and Watkins, Isobel Harbison and Ilaria Gianni No. 124, Circa Art Magazine 2008 Macht Arbeit, Interview with Stephanie Kleefeld Texte zur Kunst, Issue 73, 2009 Claire Fontaine by Anthony Huberman, Bomb Magazine No. 105, 10.2008
Solo exhibitions
2005: Claire Fontaine, Galerie Meerrettich im Glaspavillon an der Volksbühne, Berlin 2005: Foreigners Everywhere, Reena Spaulings Fine Art, New York US
2005: Requiem for Jean-Charles de Menezes, Tratari, Graz AT 2005: Étrangers Partout, 21 rue Ste Marthe, Paris FR 2006: Siamo tutti singolarità qualunque, Il piccolo Museion, progetto Garutti, Museion Bolzano IT 2006: Couvrir Les Feux, Zoo Galerie, Nantes, FR 2007: Équivalences, Le Centre d'Art Villa Arson, Nice 2007: The 00's, The history of a decade that has not yet been named, Biennale d'Art Contemporain de Lyon 2007, Institut d'Art Contemporaine, Villeurbanne, Lyon FR 2007: Get Lost, Module, Palais de Tokyo, Paris FR 2007: How to? Kunsthalle Zurich, CH 2007: Taccuini Di Guerra Incivile, T293, Napoli IT 2007: Téléphone Arabe, Air de Paris, Paris FR 2007: Footnotes on the state of exception, Reena Spaulings Fine Art, New York US 01.07 2008: Perplexed in Public, Lisson Gallery, London UK 2009: Is freedom therapeutic?, Barock: art, science, faith and technology in the contemporary age (curators: Eduardo Cicelyn, Mario Codognato), Museo d'Arte Contemporanea Donna Regina, Napoli 2011: No Family Life, Air de Paris, Paris 2012: Généralités, La Douane, Galerie Chantal Crousel, Paris 2013: Redemptions, C.C.A. Wattis, San Francisco 2014: Using Walls, Floors, and Ceilings, The Jewish Museum, New York 2015: Stop Seeking Approval, Metro Pictures, New York 2016: May our enemies not prosper, Galerie Neu, Berlin 2018: Same war time zone, Holding Contemporary, Portland, OR 2019: Les printemps seront silencieux, Confort Moderne, Poiters FR 2019: La borsa e la vita, Palazzo Ducale di Genova, Genova, IT 2019: Claire Fontaine, Rolli Days, Strade e palazzo da vivere, Banca Carige, Sede Centrale, Genova, IT 2019: OK NO, Synnika, Frankfurt DE 2019: Ettore Majorana, Viaggio in Siclia, Planeta Sciaranuova, Castiglione di Sicilia IT 2009 2019: Too late to read, Longtang, Zurich CH 2019: Your Money and Your Life, Galeria Av. Da Índia: Tomadas, Lisbon PT
References
Further reading
What Comes After Farce by Hal Foster, Human Strike (pg. 59–67) Verso, 224 pages / May 2020 / Out of This Disaster, New Approaches to Art May Emerge, Hal Foster on What—Or May Not—Come After Covid-19, Hal Foster, Literary Hub, May 21, 2020 On Claire Fontaine at Reena Spaulings, Los Angeles, Anita Chari, May Quarterly Journal, No. 20 14 March 2020 PFW FW20: Dior's Ode to the Past is a Path to the Future, Eliza Jordan, Whitewall 26.02. 2020 Sorry, das ist Poster-Feminismus, Von Johanna Dürrholz, Frankfurter Allgemeine, 20.03.2020 A Companion to Feminist Art, Hilary Robinson (Editor), Maria Elena Buszek (Editor), Dana Arnold (Series Editor) The Hidden Abode Beneath/Behind/Beyond the Factory Floor, Gendered Labor, and the Human Strike: Claire Fontaine's Italian Marxist Feminism, (p. 369) Jaleh Mansoor, Wiley-Blackwell, 2019 2019 Collettivi di artisti, sul mercato l'unione fa la forza, Silvia Anna Barrilà, Il Sole 24 Ore, 04.08.2019 Claire Fontaine: la borsa e la vita in Il primo amore, Umberto Sebastiano, 23.03.19 Speculation as a Mode of Production, Forms of Value Subjectivity in Art and Capital, Marina Vishmidt, Haymarket Books, 2019 Going Nowhere, Slow: The Aesthetics and Politics of Depression, Mikkel Krause Frantzen, Zero Books 2019 Nuova luce su Ettore Majorana. Claire Fontaine protagonista di Viaggio in Sicilia di Planeta, Desirée Maida, Artibune 08.2019 Storie dell'Arte / Claire Fontaine, ready-made per riflettere sul senso delle cose, Maria Chiara Valacchi, Corriere della Sera 30.10.2019 Marshall Plan Modernism Italian Postwar Abstraction and the Beginnings of Autonomia, Jaleh Mansoor, Duke University Press Prendi i soldi e vivi!, Andrea Rossetti, Exibart, Aprile 2019 Les pompiers entre dévouement et amertume, Romain Pudal, Le Monde diplomatique, mars 2017 Le traiettorie devianti delle immagini, Giovanna Ferrara, Il manifesto, 20.10.2017 Claire Fontaine by François Piron, Flashart, 20.12. 2016 Are we all Migrants?, Patrice Joly, Zero Deux, Issue #.76 2015 Portrait of Claire Fontaine by Raimar Stange, Spike Magazine, No. 36 Summer 2013 Crisis and Redemption: Claire Fontaine and the perceptual crisis of Neoliberalism, Anita Chari, Contemporary Political Theory 2013 Claire Fontaine, Chris Wiley, Reviews, Frieze, Issue 146 04.2012 Locating Claire Fontaine, Marie Heilich, Temporary Art Review, January 18, 2012 Their Insurrection, ready-made artist Claire Fontaine fuses art, politics and irony, Rozalia Jovanovic, Modern Painters 10. 2011