Portable Paradises: Claire Fontaine

Where Are My Keys – WrMK is pleased to open Claire Fontaine’s SILENCED, the fifth chapter of Portable Paradises, a site-specific art project taking place at Ausgabe, a historic kiosk located in Vienna’s 9th district.

Claire Fontaine is an artist duo established in 2004 by James Thornhill and Fulvia Carnevale, who operate under the guise of a single “readymade artist.” Claire Fontaine challenges conventional notions of artistic authorship and the role of the artist in a commodified, capitalist society. Their name, borrowed from a French brand of school supplies, symbolizes the artist as a blank slate or “found object,” ready to be filled or repurposed. Deeply influenced by radical political thought, Claire Fontaine’s work critiques issues of labor, identity, alienation, and power structures. Through a diverse range of media, the duo interrogates the nature of contemporary art and its entanglement with consumer culture and social inequalities. For Ausgabe, Claire Fontaine will present the installation SILENCED, composed by two recent works, Can the subaltern speak? brickbat, 2024, and L’homme mort, 2024, which have been adapted to respond to the kiosk’s architecture.