Claire Fontaine

The neon on display here is the Romani language version of Claire Fontaine’s Foreigners Everywhere series. Inspired by the Turin-based anarchist collective of the same name, the artists translated it into different languages spoken by migrants including Arabic, Kurdish, Chinese and Romani. Ranging from 10 to 12 million individuals, the Roma people are Europe’s largest ethnic minority. Long victims of anti-Gypsyism, and often associated with poverty and nomadism, Roma people throughout the centuries have embodied the idea of “otherness” in relation to Europeans, and have long been represented with the image of the wandering traveller and the dangerous stateless person. However, Claire Fontaine’s work remains ambiguous enough to allow a double reading: either as a xenophobic externalisation or as a manifestation of a feeling of disorientation and displacement. The artists evoke the feeling of never be at home in a globalised society, and reminds us how common the feeling of foreignness can be. The work is an invitation to reflect on the politics of exclusion and inclusion that affect the identity of who can call themselves European and who cannot.