Claire Fall Blanchette (USA) är gästkonstnär på Konstepidemin under juni – augusti 2018.

“Intrigued by history, nostalgia, and place, my studio practice examines the connection of personal experience and collective history. A central part of my practice is the collection of rubbings, natural objects, photographs, and other various items. By using these objects as historical, emotional, and visual guides, I am able to question what makes a place, space, or object sacred; and why one begins to feel ownership towards these things.

In my recent work, I have been exploring the presence and importance of structures such as cairns and monoliths. In antiquity, piles of rocks and large markers were largely used to signify graves. These spaces were sacred – the markers themselves are a momentous physical symbol of remembrance. The labor of arranging them created an emotional mark on the landscape that has lasted for centuries. I am interested in how these structures held meaning to those who arranged them, and how they have a lasting impression on the land. As I move forward with this work, I aim to answer questions around these structures presence within a landscape, and as venerated, individual objects.”

Claire Fall Blanchette (b. 1994) grew up in Dresden, Maine, USA. She is a graduate of Massachusetts College of Art and Design in Boston, Massachusetts, where she received her BFA in Printmaking and History of Art in 2016. She is the recipient of the 2017 Reba Stewart – Genevieve McMillan Travel Fellowship that has funded her travel and residency at Konstepidemin in Gothenburg, Sweden during the summer of 2018. Claire currently lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.

Instagram: @clr_fall