Wendy Wolfe Fine

Artist Statement
As a multi-media artist with a focus on digital video and installation art, I enjoy telling stories. I explore issues of women, migration, world cultures, nature, Jewish and Israeli identity, tradition and culture. Simply asking questions does not entirely abate my curiosity, and my interest is especially piqued when the answers are elusive or non-existent.

I create narrative visualizations through the digital assembly of found and created footage, video interviews, photographs, documents, titles, intertitles, music, sounds and memorabilia. Through installation I create spaces that incorporate video, sculpture, collage, monoprint, and other mediums. Tensions rise in the depictions of opposing binaries like tradition and modernity, restriction and freedom, and public and private lives. My characters develop trust in me and open up as I become close to them and immerse myself in their culture. Clothing, textiles, food, and rituals play a part in these depictions, and the blending of these elements stimulates the viewers’ senses. Themes emerge around issues of memory, displacement, identity, and the role of women in perpetuating culture and tradition.

My work has evolved to include a more complex visualization of the cultural, the historic and the personal. Defying convention and breaking out of mainstream standards for depiction can yield richly layered visual art that evokes meaning beyond the literal.