L'inconnue de la Seine
The subject of L’Inconnue de la Seine (2011) is an anonymous woman who drowned in the River Seine in late nineteenth-century Paris. The morgue attendant was so moved by the woman’s beauty and serenity that he took the death mask, and it has captivated people ever since. In the twentieth century the cast was mass-produced to adorn the interiors of homes in Europe, but is more commonly encountered today as the prototype ‘Resusci-Annie’ CPR mannequin, which has become crucial to First Aid training across the world.
L’Inconnue de la Seine resonates with artist Rebecca Fortnum’s interest in reanimating historical depictions by and of women, and in particular closed-eye portraits. 91¶¶Òõ the downwards, closed or diverted gaze, Fortnum explains: ‘I enjoy the ambiguity implicit in both the signalling of empowered absorption or self-containment alongside a reading of social conformity and female modesty.’
