About Christian Dior Artist Claire Fontaine on the Dior Autumn-Winter 2020-2021 Set ad VIDEO Christian Dior Artist Claire Fontaine on the Dior Autumn-Winter 2020-2021 Set The collective, feminist, conceptual artist Claire Fontaine discuss their collaboration on the Dior Autumn-Winter 2020-2021 show scenography, and how an interest in pioneering figures of Italian feminism shared by Maria Grazia Chiuri resulted in powerful illuminated manifestos and a newsprint floor installation.

00:02 Claire Fontaine is a feminist,

00:05 collective and conceptual artist.

00:08 Which means that our work

00:10 isn’t coherent in a formal sense.

00:13 We make things, artworks that allow people

00:17 to ask themselves “What am I looking at?”

00:21 For example, in this installation, the LED signs

00:24 are totally anonymous from a formal point of view.

00:27 And our identity comes through

00:29 in the thought process

00:33 behind these forms.

00:35 How wonderful!

00:37 It’s perfect, thank you.

00:39 Are we going to stick with the flashing ‘Love’?

00:42 It’s beautiful!

00:44 That one is great.

00:45 The pink one really pops.

00:47 Magnificent… I’m speechless.

00:50 Maria Grazia gave us total carte blanche.

00:54 We were brought together by our shared passion for feminism

00:58 notably Italian feminism of the seventies and eighties.

01:01 We spoke a lot about Carla Lonzi,

01:03 and the discussion we had about a more contemporary image of women

01:07 resulted in these words.

01:10 This is ‘I Say I’, which comes from Carla Lonzi’s

01:13 introduction to ‘La Presenza dell'uomo nel Femminismo’.

01:17 On the floor is a work

01:20 that we have already produced in several different versions.

01:23 The work is called ‘Newsfloor’,

01:25 and it transforms the catwalk’s neutral character.

01:31 There are a series of quite schematic phrases about patriarchy.

01:35 Patriarchy equals something, several times

01:37 which is clearly a term that evokes

01:41 toxic masculinity.

01:42 The opposite of patriarchy is not necessarily matriarchy.

01:46 The opposite of patriarchy is a free and equal society,

01:51 in which women and men can coexist.

01:54 A society that respects life, that doesn’t venerate war,

01:58 that doesn’t prize toxic production.

02:00 One that promotes education, thought, and intelligence. Christian Dior