It seems a natural fit, obvious even, to include artist Iris Häussler when discussing the role of fakes, hoaxes and/or deceptions in contemporary art practice. Häussler, who is perhaps best known for her 2008 project He Named Her Amber curated by David Moos for the Art Gallery of Ontario’s reopening, constructs elaborately detailed and immersive narrative installations around fictitious personae. It was surprising to me, then, how often she swung to a preoccupation of failure’s figuration in her development as an artist, both in the artist talk she gave in conjunction with our symposium and in my subsequent conversation with her.

A skilled manipulator of mood and drama, Häussler began her artist talk via proxy, spontaneously commandeering one of the organizers to amend the introductory biography with something she written herself. It went like this...