Bio:
Emily is a multimedia artist living and working in Somerville, MA. She holds a BS in Fine Art and Theater from Drew University, an M.Ed from Lesley University in Creative Arts and Learning, and
is a candidate for Master of Fine Arts in Interdisciplinary Arts from Goddard College. Her current obsessions include video manipulation, collecting 8mm film and projectors, playing with her
Holga camera, dance and choregraphy, and making body parts out of silicone and soap.
Artist Statement:
I am a 32-year old woman who finds herself in the middle of a constantly-changing life. I reference a past that features a version of me who is familiar but no longer accurate. I can envision a future, but the me who will inhabit that future is a mystery. The only thing I am able to do is to figure out who I am and what I’m doing here, now.
This search for context forms the core of my art practice. While my art is of me and about me, it is not only for me. I work to share visual representations of universal experiences in order to facilitate collective knowledge and clues to a common story.
I go about my work like an explorer of new lands. I gather my knowledge and set a course, not knowing exactly where my journey will take me. I reference Maya Deren and Bill Viola’s use of a poetic exploration of time and experience by using vertical and horizontal axes to chart my course: searching deep within myself vertically for personal experience while horizontally studying the external world before and after me for influences and affects. The combination of these axes creates a virtual cross-hairs; essentially, x marks the spot on the “treasure map” of me. These axes meet in the present moment.
Using the horizontal and vertical axes of time and experience is really a study of the public and private, the inner and outer versions of myself. My skin is the literal meeting place of my inner and outer worlds. Therefore my body is featured prominently in my work, and is an important tool for my exploratory practice in digital photography and video.
Historically, self-portraiture by female body artists has been a loaded endeavor. I look to brave artists before me- Claude Cahun, Cindy Sherman, Hannah Wilke and Carolee Schneemann, along with many others- for guidance and inspiration. These women prove that autobiographical art can transcend gendered powerplays, sexual references and eroticism, narcissism, Essentialism, and feminist politics. While all important pursuits, I map different territory- the collective human experience through visual representation. I create and share visual stories that have the capacity to connect our past and future selves, and, therefore, our past and future legacy.