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 the video-projection, book-making and photography.
