Angela Fette is a painter, poet and performance artist. She is known for her idiosyncratic combinations of readings and rituals in proto-avant-garde costumes, masks, and hat designs, close in spirit to the interdisciplinary approach of Bauhaus and to Oskar Schlemmer’s dances. In her wide variety of art works she assumes the role of a meta-artist, pursuing the position and implications assigned to the “artist” by society. Fette is part of the artist duo
Weisser Westen (White West). In the group’s performances, she assumes the role of an outsider, an alien, a harlequin, or a shaman, which allows her to offer a distanced analysis of society. She enjoys the intrinsic advantages of her characters, such as the privilege of fools often attributed to such figures in the history of art (e.g. in works by Picasso and Beuys). As a harlequin, this criticism is also associated with loneliness, melancholy, and a romantic yearning.
At the Herzliya Museum of Contemporary Art, Fette’s installation Danse Macabre combines abstract paintings, costumes, cardboard objects, and masks, which she uses in her performances. The paintings and a variety of objects refer to an eternal sphere of spirituality, whereas the masks and other objects are icons of delectation and a Dionysian, irrational way of life, which sometimes draws us near to death. Dressed up as her fictional figures, her alter egos, Fette tries to connect these two antipodes but remains an in-between, bittersweet figure on the verge.