Rachel Maclean
Mama Mimi Duck

#1 Amely Deiss – Director Kunstpalais Erlangen and Municipal Art Collection
Rachel Maclean’s work leaves no one cold, no one indifferent. You either love her work or you hate it. And that’s always a good thing. I (myself) am (of course) completely fascinated by Rachel Maclean’s work. Both the pastel-coloured, quaint, cute and disturbing works and those with a more historical feel attract me like magic. They captivate with their beauty, their fantasy and their perfection, and ultimately draw the viewer into the abysses of content and aesthetics, which open up in an almost shocking manner. And so the questions she raises in her works really do linger for a long time.

#2 Annekathrin Kohout – Art Historian and Author
In Rachel Maclean’s world, cuteness is a Trojan horse—adorable on the outside, but ready to mess with your mind. These aren’t just the innocent cherubs from art history; they’re more like the kids at the party who’d pop your balloon. Her art seems to say, “Think cuteness is harmless? Think again.” Yet, she doesn’t fully demonize it. The joy and happiness cuteness can evoke are still present, acknowledging its power. Maclean’s strength lies in celebrating and critiquing cuteness simultaneously, showing that both perspectives are justified.
 
#3 Kevin Muhlen – Artistic Director Casino Luxemburg
In 2014, I visited the exhibition “Over (Drive+Flow)” curated by my good friend Benjamin Bianciotto at a Paris gallery. That’s where I first encountered Rachel Maclean’s Over the Rainbow. I was mesmerized by her surreal world—the storytelling, the vivid colors, baroque costumes, grotesque characters—it all stuck with me. As soon as I left, I dove deeper into her work, captivated. I knew right then that I had to invite her; one year later we were opening her exhibition at Casino.
 
#4 Simon Groom – Director Modern & Contemporary Art, National Galleries of Scotland
I hesitate to write about Rachel – what to say of an artist so supremely talented, so fiercely funny and intelligent, who can say so much so powerfully and originally, and plays so many parts so well that she disappears completely whilst always in plain sight? She is the real deal, as indefinable and enigmatic as an artist the more compelling and urgent the reality her works define.
 
#5 Deborah Smith – Curator and Collections Consultant
What draws me to Rachel Maclean’s work? Is it her remarkable curiosity and inquisitive mind? The way she delves deep into subjects that might initially seem trivial but compels us to view the world in a new light? Our collaboration at the Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery, Too Cute! Sweet is about to get sinister, examined why cute things can also be unsettling—why the same things that make us go “aww” can also make us shudder. To me, Maclean’s work redefines how we see and engage with these contradictions, giving them a new sense of resonance.
 
#6 Daniel F. Herrmann – Curator of Modern & Contemporary Projects, National Gallery, London
What a joy to get to work with Rachel Maclean!  Here is an artist smart as a whip with a sense of humour that’s sharp as a tack. Maclean’s grotesques and satires are steeped in the history of art and literature and expertly interrogate power, values and society. From national identity to standards of female beauty: With her keen interest in how culture represents the world, Maclean’s work is probing the History of Ideas. And that makes her work so important today.
 
#7 Dr. Anette Hüsch – Director of the Kunsthalle zu Kiel
Rachel Maclean’s bizarre art worlds are the expression of a shrill and precise strategy of excessive demands/overwhelm. The artist develops detailed and subtle works in which she addresses issues such as power relations and gender images. Rachel’s extensive solo exhibition at the Kunsthalle zu Kiel in 2020 was great, serious fun. Thanks to a donation from the artist, her multi-part installation ‘Native Animals’ has been part of the museum’s collection ever since. Thank goodness!
 
#8 Tessa Giblin – Director, Talbot Rice Gallery, University of Edinburgh
 
#9 Claire Catterall – Senior Curator at Somerset House, London
Rachel’s understanding of cute’s dark underbelly was perfect for our exhibition Cute at Somerset House. In a magnificent diptych, her protagonist Mimi is presented lost in a dark fairytale forest, navigating her way through a world obsessed with image, youth and beauty. Here, Rachel abandoned the candy-coloured idyll of Mimi’s more familiar surroundings to reveal an unsettling world, mirroring cute’s own unnerving way of upending traditional boundaries: up/down, young/old, beautiful/grotesque. In Rachel’s deft hands the impossible fantasies that late capitalism feeds us are laid bare.
 
#10 Joseph Harrison Davies – Sales Director, Josh Lilley, London
Rachel is unquestionably one of the leading voices in contemporary culture working today. Her show at Kunsthalle Gießen, Mama Mimi Duck, typically conveys her exceptional talent for incisive social commentary, wit and humour. It also showcases her prowess as a practitioner creatively adept in an ever expanding array of material and technical approaches to art making, cementing her status as an artist capable of manipulating concepts of the art historical past with the technology of tomorrow.

#11 Dr. Nadia Ismail – Director Kunsthalle Giessen
Spellbound by the art of Rachel Maclean:
Rachel creates worlds marked by dualism, where her sweetly exaggerated visual language immediately captivates. Grotesquely beautiful, bizarrely funny, disturbingly clairvoyant – all these pairs of opposites contain a tippingpoint that forms the true essence of her art and is the focus of her interest. When does the positive turn into the negative, when does the cute become horror? In Rachel’s unique visual language, subtle yet intelligent commentary on societal issues merges, including motherhood, the dictatorship of beauty and youth, and ultimately the question of proclaimed truth – Because it’s mi mi mi mi…