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Zazie Bénédicte Claris is an artist living and working in London. She graduated from Kingston University with a First Class degree in Fine Art & Art History in July 2018. Contact: [email protected]

Artist’s Statement:

Driving my work is a fascination with the interplay between technology and the way we perceive information in the digital age. I use words as a medium to reflect the way information is produced and circulated. I construct forms of automatic concrete poetry in response to the social and political worlds that surround me. Wit and humour punctuate my practice, undermining the seriousness of the subjects I choose. I construct haikus, for instance, from the tweets of the current leader of the free world, Donald Trump, and see memes as serious vehicles to present information. The practice of words lends itself comfortably to printmaking, and silk-screen printing, relief and risograph feature particularly in my practice. On top of these, I have developed an interest in the mechanical production of words. I have been using the Olivetti to produce concrete poetry, and the products of this process form my artwork. A central theme in my work has been the normalisation of technology and the absorption of information in the millennial age. I am intrigued by the tension between the near-abstract technology of the millennial age and the blatant physicality of antiquated processes, and have been exploring the older technology of the typewriter and juxtaposing it with contemporary extremes.In one work I filmed the typewriter using a Phantom Camera, a highly advanced and rarefied piece of technology, slowing the typed process to 1000 frames / second, so that the true violence of the typed word is on full show. 

Selected group exhibitions:

Kingston University Degree Show, Kingston School of Art, June 2018 ‘Painting by Numbers’, Avionics, Kingston School of Art, March 2018 ‘Making and Showing’, Platform Gallery, Kingston School of Art, February 2018 ‘Give It a Rest’, Kingston School of Art, May 2017

‘Bring Mum and Dad’, Kingston School of Art’, May 2016‘

Digital images for RISO printing // March/April 2018 - basis of degree show presentation

‘Olivetti’  ’Out fix pre’ ‘Boundary (s) Distinction’ ‘Trickster’ ‘Slipping the TRAP’ ‘WR WR’ ‘Untitled’

[scanned] Typewriter CONCRETE poetry // Jan/Feb 2018