Kinship and Other Fictions

In Kinship and Other Fictions Rueter plays with the dynamic between art/artifact and history/fiction through a family history. The artwork uses digital reproductions of paintings and drawings depicting members of her family made by Dutch and Canadian artists during the 19th and 20th centuries. The artworks, their frames and tapestries derived from Rueter’s own clothing are digitally adjusted, manually reassembled, hand-cut and combined. Hanging beside the portraits are reconstructed family stories in which Rueter blends oral histories and material sourced from the public record to weave a fanciful tale.