Emma Shapiro (b. 1988) is an American artist and feminist activist based in Valencia, Spain.

She holds a degree in Painting from The Rhode Island School of Design (’10) and has received multiple fellowships, awards, and residency opportunities to pursue her artistic and activist work. Upon completion of her degree, Emma pursued a professional career as an artists’ model in NYC for 5 years, an experience that deeply impacted her art practice and understanding of the body.

Through her use of layered video projection, self-portraiture, and repeated encounters with her own image, she deconstructs and questions the meaning of our bodies, how we know them, and what they could be. Her recent move from her native US to Europe has triggered a body of work concerning the memory of the self, and how we anchor our notion of the “self” in memories. Recently, Shapiro completed an Artist-In-Residence with The Liminal gallery in Valencia, Spain, during which time she explored this concept in video, projection, book-making and photography.

Artist’s Statement

My work is exploring identity, memory, ancestry and ephemerality by using my body as a primary tool. I seek to represent the human and female form as a timeless event, ephemeral yet fixed through genealogical and physical memory.

I see my body as a vessel for ancestral history – a link to family lost to anti-semitism and the Irish Famine – and thus a primal act of resistance against injustice, and a representation of hope.

My background as a professional art model allowed me to experience my own form as not only a subject but also a concept. Through my use of layered video projection, self-portraiture, and repeated encounters with my own image, I deconstruct and question the meaning of our bodies, how we know them, and what they could be.

Listen

Read

VR Exhibition in Hubs Mozilla

To enjoy the exhibition inside Hubs Mozilla, please make sure to have:

• a computer (NO smartphone)
• a stable connection
• Firefox or Google Chrome!
• your earphones

How to navigate inside Hubs Mozilla (laptops or headsets)

• a mouse to rotate: Q and E or left mouse button * to teleport: Right mouse button
• a keyboard to move: Arrow or W, A, S, D keys * to fly: G or type /fly in chat * to move faster: press the SHIFT key + arrow

Engage with our Digital Network on Discord.

Thanks to your generous support, Agora builds your permanent virtual exhibition.