Arts and Politics

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Arts and Politics

Many artists tend to overwork themselves and get frustrated. Even if they were to work 18 hours a day on a project, many of them still wouldn’t be able to pat themselves on the shoulder and say “You’ve done a great job! You should be happy!” Of all the times they say it, they rarely feel it. But when you get down to the bottom of it, they absolutely love to do it!

Just like that, Emilie gets neurotic when she works, and hence she prefers to work alone at night. Upon my insistence she reveals some of the secret characteristics of her artist persona: she gazes at the drawing, moves back, gazes some more, moves closer, speaks to herself and works for long hours until the picture in her head comes alive. It’s rarely the exact same picture, but sometimes it’s “even better”. She’s sharing her studio with two friends this year. As a result, she prefers to work at home even though she misses the times when she pulled all-nighters in Johnson and turned the lights off as the sun came up.

Even though she works like a zombie in order to avoid human presence, the result inevitably begs for the daylights due to its political subject matter. Emilie doesn’t do art for art’s sake. She has a purpose: to make the viewer think. “It’s really important to know what you think about everything.. ‘Cause if you don’t know, then what are you bringing to the table?.. In order to be a complete person you need to have complete opinions about a wide spectrum of things.” Unlike some political art that’s shoved into your face, Emilie tries to be subtle. She likes to put things out there and leave the interpretation to the viewer.

Her work mainly deals with gender, popular culture, and western mentality. “I’m a woman, I’m American, I’m middle upper class, I’m a consumer, I’m privileged. But I’m also influenced by the struggles of the other class-lower class… I’m fascinated by the concept of the exotic and how western communities turn that into a commodity. The consumption by the west of the east..” she says as she sips on Red Bull, takes another drag from her cigarette, the count of which I lost a while ago, and puts on some techno/pop music on the computer.

But that’s not all. Despite her interest and respect in political art, she immediately sits up when asked her favorite artist and speaks the name James Turrell.

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