In Her Name Was I Love You, Élise Lafontaine creates a sculptural painting that honors the visibility, resilience, and erasure of women artists throughout history. At the heart of the work is a direct visual reference to Lee Krasner’s Palingenesis—a painting whose title translates to “rebirth.” This homage not only acknowledges Krasner’s boldness, but also articulates Lafontaine’s own longing to inhabit the freedom that painting represented.
The shaped canvas, bent and curved into relief, invites movement and multiple perspectives. As the viewer shifts around the work, the image distorts—emphasizing how history itself reshapes, edits, and obscures narratives over time. The motif of the column, present in much of Lafontaine’s work, takes on renewed power here. Referencing classical caryatids—architectural figures that both support and are burdened—it becomes a vessel for light and a symbol of the complex duality women navigate: visible yet unseen, strong yet overlooked.
Rooted in her deep research into architectural and psychological spaces—including caves, monasteries, and institutional interiors—Lafontaine’s work seeks to collapse divisions between body, structure, and image. Her Name Was I Love You is a space of quiet rebellion: intimate, layered, and unapologetically embodied.