Claire Fontaine
Working on her neon in Komplot, Brussels, June 2008.
Taking her name from a brand of French notebooks, Claire Fontaine is an intellectual space whose core is empty since the most important part of her identity is cooperation. Instead, the collaborators who form Claire Fontaine consider themselves to be her assistants. Claire Fontaine was born out of a refusal to accept the division between intellectual and manual work. She chose the art world as the best place to avoid this type of hierarchy, declared herself a “readymade artist”, and began to elaborate a version of neo-conceptual art. She makes artworks that often resemble those of other artists, working in neon, video, sculpture, painting and text. However, she refuses the qualification of “appropriationist”, preferring the one of “expropriationist” that insists on the use value of the borrowed references, and on the political meaning of theft.
Text stolen on the Witte de With website
More about Claire fontaine on http://clairefontaine.ws/bio_fr.html
