Claire Fontaine is a Paris-based artist who works under a pseudonym. The name translates literally as “clear fountain,” and may refer to Marcel Duchamp’s iconic 1917 Readymade sculpture Fountain, an inverted, signed urinal that is one of the founding works of radical modernism. Claire Fontaine makes art in a range of materials and formats—appropriation, sculpture, painting, writing, filmmaking—to address ethical and political crises. Tears is inspired by recorded memories of Ellis Island, New York City’s famous immigration station, which, beginning in 1892, welcomed (and also rejected) millions of people. The nine neon signs each read “isle of tears” in the languages most commonly spoken by the new arrivals: French, Polish, Russian, Yiddish, Greek, Italian, German, Spanish, and English.