Ibis redibis non morieris in bello (2006) – Claire Fontaine
I was having an extremely hard time finding something that really interested me, but while I was researching Alexei Shulgin and trying to find a better understanding of his genre of inventions and creations of “Hot Pictures”, I stumbled upon Clair Fontaine and her mesmerizing and almost hypnotic artwork piece that you see here now. Ironically enough it was on the site that was suggested that we look at, Rhizome. The Rhizome link will then lead you to her personal website where you can understand her and her relationship to her artwork deeper (but this actual piece is not on either of her websites).
Clair Fontaine (which is actually a made up name) is a Paris based artist who was founded in 2004. Her artwork consists of neon, video, sculpture, painting, and text. She has various pieces of artwork that plays with text while using the neon to captivate and catch the attention of anyone who sees it. The medium for this peice is actually bare tungsten bulbs (neon lights), with it sequencing on and off to portray and read it’s message to the viewers.
This particular piece called “Ibis redibis non morieris in bello” derives from the Latin term meaning intertwines into two meanings; “You will go to war, you will come back, you will not die” or “You will go to war, you will not come back, you will die”. The way this is determined is by where the comma is placed before or after the word “non”. I find this coincides with the piece strikingly. When I first saw this piece I thought of hope and how hope wavers for the families that had a loved one(s) in any war, but then when I researched more I realized that it was deeper than that; as all her work is.
Clair Fontaine is an artist who’s focus is about political issues; her soft spot is the Paris Student Uprising of May 1968. Although this is her soft spot, she focuses on world wide political issues that are amazing and shocking to read about and understand. An example of this is her artwork Foreigners Everywhere (Arabic) 2005 which has a deeper message of immigration and terrorism threats. She is an artist that seems to work through her artwork to try to transform and change the way things are politically, as well as subjective emancipation.
To check out more of her comtemporary work, you can click here or here. Her artwork is simly incredible.
