Rebecca Fontaine-Wolf SWA
“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.”
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Rebecca Fontaine-Wolf is an interdisciplinary artist of mixed European heritage who grew up between Germany and the UK and is currently resident in Lisbon. She works across a range of media including painting, photography, printmaking and video. In her work which focuses heavily on self-portraiture, she explores concerns around the mediated relationship to the body and self-image as experienced in contemporary digitised culture; whilst drawing on themes and imagery inspired by mythology, mysticism and the occult. She is a co-founder of Infems : Intersectional Feminist Art Collective and former vice president to the Society of Women Artists (UK).
Fontaine-Wolf studied Fine Art at the University for the Creative Arts (2000-04) and was awarded the Chelsea Arts Club Trust Award Grant to complete her MFA at Wimbledon College of Arts (2013- 15). She’s exhibited widely in both group and solo exhibitions at venues such as the the V&A, Mall Galleries and the RCA and was recently featured in Hauser & Wirth’s ‘Herstory’ Series. Her work has appeared in numerous publications including Aesthetica, Forbes, the Guardian, ID/Vice, Hunger, Wonderland and FAD magazines, as well as appearing on the BBC. Fontaine-Wolf’s work can be found in public and private collections in the UK and internationally including the Standard Chartered Bank, 100 Mothers, Landmark collection and the private collections of Sir Tim Rice, the Earl of Mornington & Jemma Kidd.
Fontaine-Wolf uses physi-digital processes ranging from painting to photography, digital manipulation to collage and printmaking. Her work explores the contradictory forces that make up so much of our embodied human experience; the liminal spaces between the external and the internal, the physical and psychological, and the ongoing struggle between the mortal body and the possibility of an eternal spirit.
Fontaine-Wolf integrates self-portraiture to explore her own experience of the human condition, bringing a quality of intimacy to the pieces. 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.
