The Strings of Love

The Strings of Love, Adelina Bernard's pre-campaign for Pulling Strings, explores the emotional strings that come with loving someone.

The pre-campaign is created by Renée Rautio, a London-based multidisciplinary artist working across moving image, sculpture, and installation. Renée explores themes that reflect on the ambiguities of human nature and the impermanence of all things. An awareness of mortality underpins her work, informed by the Latin phrase Memento Mori “Remember that you must die”, acts as a conceptual anchor in her work. With this concept, she creates sculptural puppets and fragile environments using materials such as clay, plaster, paper, and cardboard. These materials are intentionally delicate and transient, mirroring the ephemerality of the narratives.

Using these materials, Renée builds immersive sets and environments that become stages for imagined or remembered realities. The technique of stop motion allows her to explore spaces and moments that feel suspended in time. The puppets in her work are vessels that embody both human and non-human qualities. Surfaces are often imperfect, worn, or intentionally unresolved, reflecting the instability and unpredictability of lived experience. She is interested in how these tactile qualities can evoke a sense of intimacy while also teetering towards the uncanny. Rather than offering fixed narratives, she invites the viewer to open interpretation and linger in the uncertainty.