Rebecca Fontaine-Wolf
“The reflections of the segmented body explore contemporary concerns with self-image and digital representation, which can lead us to feel a deep sense of fragmentation in much the same way as mirror-gazing can have a dissociative effect on our sense of identity.”
Rebecca Fontaine-Wolf is an interdisciplinary artist who works primarily with mirrors and self-portraiture in order to explore her experiences of womanhood: the visceral realities as well as their societal implications. She developed a unique physi-digital mixed media technique in order to create works which incorporate her concerns around identity, self-image and digital representation within the working methodology.
Fontaine-Wolf is a Chelsea Arts Club Trust Award Grant recipient and former vice president of the Society of Women Artists (UK). She is a co-founder and director of InFems: Feminist Art Collective with whom she recently curated ‘Lost Girls’ which featured world renowned artists such as Ai Weiwei, Maggi Hambling and more. She’s exhibited at institutions such as the V&A Museum & Royal College of Art, London, Haus Kunst Mitte, Berlin, and has been featured in Forbes, the Guardian and the BBC. In 2022 she was commissioned by Carolina Herrera for International Women's Day and is due to have her first institutional solo exhibition in Berlin this year . Her work has been exhibited widely and can be found in public and private collections in the UK and internationally.
Rebecca Fontaine-Wolf works primarily with mirrors and self-portraiture in order to explore her experiences of womanhood in a digital age: the visceral realities as well as their societal implications.
Fontaine-Wolf integrates self-portraiture to explore her own experience of the human condition, bringing a quality of intimacy to her work. The nature of the images created however - faceless, distorted and almost otherworldly - allows for these images to extend outwards from the purely personal into the realm of the archetypal.
The use of mirrors in composing the images draws on Fontaine-Wolf’s ongoing interest in Vanitas symbolism and Lacanian mirror theory, whilst also referencing her interest in mysticism and the occult. The reflections of the segmented body explore contemporary concerns with self-image and digital representation, which can lead us to feel a deep sense of fragmentation in much the same way as mirror-gazing can have a dissociative effect on our sense of identity.
She uses physi-digital processes to reflect these interests. Traditional media and techniques are used alongside digital and experimental uses of materials. These continually feed back into each other creating multiple layers. A process of creation and destruction, using both chance and control.