Rachel Maclean
Mama Mimi Duck

At the heart of Rachel Maclean’s multimedia practice are virtual realities, deepfakes, photography and film techniques, which she uses to bring garish, fantastical narratives to life. The artist develops satirical social parodies derived from politics and pop culture that address topics such as digitalization, social media, gender and capitalism. Opulent and extraordinarily staged, Maclean creates immersive environments and kitschy-grotesque paintings that increasingly blur the boundaries between two-dimensionality and fictional as well as real space.

The centerpiece of the exhibition Mama Mimi Duck is Maclean’s new body of work Mama, consisting of large-scale digital paintings embedded in a lavish landscape of curtains. Mama highlights the confusing and surreal experience of new motherhood. In addition, the artist presents her first fully animated film upside mimi ᴉɯᴉɯ uʍop, which addresses the pressure that social media exerts, especially on young people. In a further video work titled DUCK, Maclean employs deepfakes to deal with current trends such as reporting by unverified sources. Striking two-dimensional works extend the virtual worlds of the videos into the real space.

Rachel Maclean (* 1987 Edinburgh, GB) lives and works in Glasgow. She studied painting and drawing at Edinburgh College of Art. Her works were exhibited at the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra; Tate Britain, London; Trade Gallery, Nottingham; Kunsthalle Kiel, Kiel and Kunstpalais Erlangen, Erlangen. She also represented Scotland at the 57th Biennale di Venezia 201.

There are plans to publish a catalogue in collaboration with the Kunstpalais Erlangen.