# Ed Fornieles
**Ed Fornieles** (born 1983) is a British contemporary artist whose performances, installations, and digital works examine how identity is shaped by the habits, protocols, and narratives of networked life[1](https://www.mutualart.com/Artist/Ed-Fornieles/F606CD338ADA9EAB/Biography) • [2](https://www.somersethouse.org.uk/a-z-community-directory/ed-fornieles). Working across role-play, installation, sculpture, digital media, and performance, he constructs alternative social realities in which participants adopt invented identities, sometimes for days at a time[2](https://www.somersethouse.org.uk/a-z-community-directory/ed-fornieles). A review in *Frieze* described his practice as exploring "the interpenetration of URL and IRL" (online and in-person life) in a socially networked world[3](https://app.frieze.com/article/ed-fornieles).
| Key fact | Detail |
|---|---|
| Born | 1983, British[1](https://www.mutualart.com/Artist/Ed-Fornieles/F606CD338ADA9EAB/Biography) |
| Practice | Immersive simulations, role-play, installation, sculpture, digital media, and performance[2](https://www.somersethouse.org.uk/a-z-community-directory/ed-fornieles) |
| Signature role-play works | Animal House (2011) and Dorm Daze; the 72-hour LARP documented in The Cel (2018)[2](https://www.somersethouse.org.uk/a-z-community-directory/ed-fornieles) • [4](https://anti.athensbiennale.org/en/artist/ed-fornieles.html) |
| Institutional projects | The Dreamy Awards, Serpentine Galleries; NY NY HP HP, New Museum; The Fortress of Solitude, Palais de Tokyo, Paris[2](https://www.somersethouse.org.uk/a-z-community-directory/ed-fornieles) • [3](https://app.frieze.com/article/ed-fornieles) |
| Solo exhibitions | Modern Family (Chisenhale Gallery, 2014), Cel (Carlos/Ishikawa, 2019), Inside Out 2 (Carlos/Ishikawa, 2024)[1](https://www.mutualart.com/Artist/Ed-Fornieles/F606CD338ADA9EAB/Biography) |
| Blockchain work | The Certificate Program, 6th Athens Biennale (2018), a funding model using Ethereum[4](https://anti.athensbiennale.org/en/artist/ed-fornieles.html) |
## Themes and approach
The Zabludowicz Collection describes Fornieles as a British artist who has worked from London and Los Angeles, noting that his extended performances result in sculptural settings, videos, and artifacts that, together with the time-based components of the projects, make up his oeuvre[5](https://www.zabludowiczcollection.com/collection/artists/view/ed-fornieles). [Somerset House](https://www.edgepedia.org/somerset-house), where he is listed among its n-Space residents, frames his central concern as the invisible structures that shape identity, including the habits and protocols people inhabit and how they can feel immutable; his immersive simulations and role-plays are meant to disrupt and remap those frameworks[2](https://www.somersethouse.org.uk/a-z-community-directory/ed-fornieles).
A recurring device is the invented persona. For the 2013 exhibition *Despicable Me 2*, the fictional Britney Rivers, a Generation Y social-media character whose Instagram "selfies" suggested a real young woman, served as what the critic Jonathan Griffin called a virtual muse and subjective lens; Griffin suspected that Fornieles held the passwords to her online profiles[6](https://artreview.com/october-2013-review-ed-fornieles/). The show's roughly 40 works, including lightboxes, cast sculptures of the *Family Guy* baby [Stewie Griffin](https://www.edgepedia.org/stewie-griffin), and impaled soft toys, were described as an ambivalent embodiment of network culture rather than an ideological critique of it[6](https://artreview.com/october-2013-review-ed-fornieles/).
## Major works
**Role-play and social performance.** His large-scale role-play works *Animal House* (2011) and *Dorm Daze* established his interest in collective social dynamics[2](https://www.somersethouse.org.uk/a-z-community-directory/ed-fornieles). For *New York New York Happy Happy* (NY NY HP HP) (2013), presented at the New Museum in New York, he put on a partly invented benefit event for the online journal Rhizome, where rather than dress up in costumes, attendees took on fresh personas for the evening.[3](https://app.frieze.com/article/ed-fornieles) The critic Helen Stuhr-Rommereim wrote that thinking of Fornieles brings to mind "a hoard of people", reflecting how central participants are to his practice[7](https://www.full-stop.net/2015/08/19/features/helen-stuhr-rommereim/i-dont-actually-know-where-my-faculties-are/). He also organized the performance *The Fortress of Solitude* at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, and staged *The Dreamy Awards* at the Serpentine Galleries in London[2](https://www.somersethouse.org.uk/a-z-community-directory/ed-fornieles).
**Modern Family (2014).** At Chisenhale Gallery, London, Fornieles attempted to map how the internet has infiltrated the family, treating the "flat-pack family" of mainstream American television rather than the Freudian family of trauma[3](https://app.frieze.com/article/ed-fornieles). The installation was arranged as a suburban Los Angeles garden with [AstroTurf](https://www.edgepedia.org/astroturf), an ash-filled barbecue, and a picnic table, and flatscreen monitors displayed collages of jpegs and gifs extracted in real time from the back ends of websites, the data trails of his fictional "family members"[3](https://app.frieze.com/article/ed-fornieles). A *Time Out* review described the result as "an environment not so much of art objects, but instead of content", with imagery and music algorithmically generated by specially coded software[8](https://www.timeout.com/london/art/ed-fornieles-modern-family).
**Der Geist: Flesh Feast (2016).** Shown at Arratia Beer in Berlin, the exhibition centered on a video about a cartoon fox and his success with the Bulletproof Diet, a high-fat, low-carb diet trend, surrounded by motivational posters, diet-packs, and 3D-printed figurines[9](https://www.frieze.com/article/ed-fornieles-0). The fox is a recurring character in Fornieles's work that stands in as a surrogate for the artist both on- and off-line[9](https://www.frieze.com/article/ed-fornieles-0).
**Blockchain and LARP.** His contribution to the 6th Athens Biennale (2018), *The Certificate Program*, was a funding model intended to reshape the financial mechanisms sustaining an artist's studio, using Ethereum blockchain technology to store and distribute value. Each certificate contained an embedded key behind a scratch panel, so holders deciding whether to cash out had to judge whether the certificate or Ethereum was worth more at that moment; each new generation of certificates rose in sale value at fixed points[4](https://anti.athensbiennale.org/en/artist/ed-fornieles.html). The accompanying video *The Cel* documented a 72-hour live action role play by OMSK Social Club in which players left their regular lives to confront deep individual and collective psychological patterns[4](https://anti.athensbiennale.org/en/artist/ed-fornieles.html). *Cel* was later shown as a solo exhibition at Carlos/Ishikawa in London in 2019 and screened at the New Museum[1](https://www.mutualart.com/Artist/Ed-Fornieles/F606CD338ADA9EAB/Biography) • [10](https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5be45c10e2ccd1dd551f62b9/t/5f0630580b01c07d0f8eb779/1594241112117/ed-fornieles-cv-en.pdf).
**The Finiliar and Associations.** *The Finiliar*, shown at Arsenal Contemporary Art in New York in 2017, was covered by *Techworld* under the heading that Finiliar "turns data into empathy tool"[1](https://www.mutualart.com/Artist/Ed-Fornieles/F606CD338ADA9EAB/Biography) • [10](https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5be45c10e2ccd1dd551f62b9/t/5f0630580b01c07d0f8eb779/1594241112117/ed-fornieles-cv-en.pdf). The 2021 project *Associations* at Carlos/Ishikawa, accompanied by a booklet text with the art historian Ben Burbridge, grew chains of images in which each picture leads to the next by aesthetic or conceptual similarity; a text in the booklet reflects that the resulting arrangements of lines, loops, and grids may say more about limitations than possibilities[11](https://www.carlosishikawa.com/site/assets/files/7869/ed_fornieles_-_associations_-_booklet_-_2021.pdf).
## Career
Before his exhibition career took off, Fornieles co-founded the Wallis Gallery in Hackney Wick, London, with Ross McNicol and Vanessa Carlos after leaving art school in Oxford; at the time he worked as an assistant to the sculptor [Anish Kapoor](https://www.edgepedia.org/anish-kapoor) and persuaded him to donate a small sum to the space[12](https://www.the-independent.com/arts-entertainment/art/features/it-s-show-time-meet-the-ambitious-young-galleristas-behind-britain-s-art-boom-765221.html).
His work has since appeared in group exhibitions including *Worldbuilding: Gaming and Art in the Digital Age* at the Julia Stoschek Collection in [Düsseldorf](https://www.edgepedia.org/dusseldorf) (2022) and *Cute* at Somerset House, London (2024)[1](https://www.mutualart.com/Artist/Ed-Fornieles/F606CD338ADA9EAB/Biography), and at Schirn Kunsthalle in [Frankfurt](https://www.edgepedia.org/frankfurt) and HEK (House of [Electronic Arts](https://www.edgepedia.org/electronic-arts)) in Basel[2](https://www.somersethouse.org.uk/a-z-community-directory/ed-fornieles). A recent gallery press release describes him as a British artist living and working in Montreal[13](https://artguide.artforum.com/uploads/guide.004/id03079/press_release.pdf).
## References
1. [Ed Fornieles biography, MutualArt](https://www.mutualart.com/Artist/Ed-Fornieles/F606CD338ADA9EAB/Biography)
2. [Ed Fornieles, Somerset House A-Z Community Directory](https://www.somersethouse.org.uk/a-z-community-directory/ed-fornieles)
3. [Patrick Langley, "Ed Fornieles" (review of Modern Family), Frieze, 30 October 2014](https://app.frieze.com/article/ed-fornieles)
4. [Ed Fornieles, 6th Athens Biennale ANTI (2018)](https://anti.athensbiennale.org/en/artist/ed-fornieles.html)
5. [Ed Fornieles, Zabludowicz Collection](https://www.zabludowiczcollection.com/collection/artists/view/ed-fornieles)
6. [Jonathan Griffin, "Ed Fornieles: Despicable Me 2", ArtReview, October 2013](https://artreview.com/october-2013-review-ed-fornieles/)
7. [Helen Stuhr-Rommereim, "I don't actually know where my faculties are", Full Stop, 19 August 2015](https://www.full-stop.net/2015/08/19/features/helen-stuhr-rommereim/i-dont-actually-know-where-my-faculties-are/)
8. [Nick Warner, "Ed Fornieles: Modern Family", Time Out London](https://www.timeout.com/london/art/ed-fornieles-modern-family)
9. [Thomas Bettridge, "Ed Fornieles" (review of Der Geist: Flesh Feast), Frieze, 2 June 2016](https://www.frieze.com/article/ed-fornieles-0)
10. [Ed Fornieles CV (PDF), artist website](https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5be45c10e2ccd1dd551f62b9/t/5f0630580b01c07d0f8eb779/1594241112117/ed-fornieles-cv-en.pdf)
11. [Ben Burbridge and Ed Fornieles, "Associations" booklet (2021), Carlos/Ishikawa](https://www.carlosishikawa.com/site/assets/files/7869/ed_fornieles_-_associations_-_booklet_-_2021.pdf)
12. ["It's show time: Meet the ambitious young 'galleristas' behind Britain's art boom", The Independent, 16 December 2007](https://www.the-independent.com/arts-entertainment/art/features/it-s-show-time-meet-the-ambitious-young-galleristas-behind-britain-s-art-boom-765221.html)
13. [Ed Fornieles press release (PDF), Artguide / Artforum](https://artguide.artforum.com/uploads/guide.004/id03079/press_release.pdf)
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*Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Visual arts and design › Sculptors*
*Initially written Sep 17, 2026 · Reviewed: Sep 30, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Sep 30, 2026; Oct 12, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026*
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License: Edgepedia Community License 1.0, https://www.edgepedia.org/edgepedia/license