The work of Claire Fontaine is filled with rich and complex objects and images whose status and meaning is constantly in flux. There are jokes. There is a handwritten text in watercolour, copied out again and again, freeing the writer from the injustices of their ancestors (I AM FREE, it concludes). There is work riffing on Marcel Duchamp’s moustachioed and goateed Mona Lisa, swapping his ribald but puzzling 1919 caption LHOOQ with LGBTQ+. There are book jackets about Palestine’s wrecked ecology and visual activism in Palestine post 7 October, each wrapped around blocks of stone, like messages to be sent crashing through somebody’s window.
At the 2024 Venice Biennale, Claire Fontaine’s neon signs reading Foreigners Everywhere appeared and reappeared, written in dozens of languages, around the Giardini and the Arsenale, and also lent the biennale its overall title, turning a familiar kneejerk complaint into a celebration of difference. A new neon sign reading FATHERFUCKER, suspended and glowing behind the window of Mimosa House, opens their biggest London show to date.
