Emma Talbot has become known for her large-scale installations of painting on silk, a medium whose formal characteristics she finds suited to articulating a feminist discourse. Talbot combines painting, drawing, animation and large-scale sculpture with distinctive imagery, combining mythological and rhythmic motifs, vibrant colours and calligraphic texts to raise issues relating to ecopolitics and the environment. In her works, Talbot engages with questions such as ‘what is nature’ and how – or if – an ethical ‘return’ to it is possible.
Human/Nature (2025), newly commissioned for ΕΜΣΤ, is a monumental textile installation made of painted silk and an accompanying animation film entitled You Are Not the Centre (Inside the Animal mind). In it – as in many of the artist’s works, there’s a female protagonist – a version of the artist herself – who is always searching and exploring, trying to make sense of the world. In this work, Talbot leaves the human sphere to enter the animal mind, trying to understand the world viewed from non-human perspectives. The figure lives through different sensory experiences as she encounters the olfactory world of the dog, the mind of a spider that plans to make complex webs or the visual perceptions of deer and the anxiety responses of captive birds etc.
The large-scale painted silk hanging features chimeras, monstrous human inventions combining different animals. This imagery symbolizes human fantasies and the entangled relationships between humans, animals, and nature. The chimera serves as a metaphor for the human Ego, our imaginings of the unknown, and the often-monstrous ways we relate to the natural world.
Accompanying the textile work is a three-dimensional hand-made, fabric work which explores the physical presence of a chimera; on one side, there is a stack of separate human and animal elements: wolf, woman, bird and snake journey through natural space. On the other side, the black silhouette of the stacked forms suggests they all share the same physical matter and energy, all part of the same living schema. Together, these works seek to unravel human-nature entanglements and envision the possibility of alternative, more caring futures.
The work has been specially commissioned for the exhibition Why Look at Animals? A Case for the Rights of Non-Human Lives, at ΕΜΣΤ, 15 May 2025 – 15 February 2026.
BIOGRAPHY
Emma Talbot was born in 1969 in Stourbridge, England. She trained at the Royal College of Art, London, and was subsequently a Rome Scholar at the British School of Rome.
Solo exhibitions (selection): The Age/L’Età – Collezione Maramotti, Reggio Emilia, Italy (2023); Kunsthaus Biel, Switzerland (2023); Whitechapel Art Gallery, London (2022); DCA Dundee (2021); East Side Projects, Birmingham (2020); Gemeentemuseum, The Hague (2019); Freud Museum, London (2016).
Group exhibitions (selection): Art in Periods of Upheaval, Kunstmuseum Bonn, Bonn (2024); Art Display, Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth; The Inescapable Intertwining of All Lives, Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf; The Ecstatic Being. Between Knowing and Understanding, STUK Leuven, Belgium (2023); The Milk of Dreams, main exhibition, 59th Venice Biennale (2022); Winter Light, Hayward London (2021).
In 2020 she was awarded the Max Mara Art Prize for Women.
PRESS MATERIAL
EXHIBITION CREDITS
Artistic Direction: Katerina Gregos
Administrative-Financial Direction: Athina Ioannou
Artistic Production | Project Co-ordination: Yannis Arvanitis
Exhibition graphic design: Schema – Dimitra Chrona
Exhibition Design Assistant: Efi Lazakidou
Lighting (ΕΜΣΤ): Gregory Sampanis
Transport & Installation: consTRUCKtivist ΕΕ Fine Art Packing & Transport Audiovisual Installation: Makis Faros, Antonis Gkatzougiannis
Deputy Director of Technical Services (ΕΜΣΤ): Iro Nikolakea
Technical Support (ΕΜΣΤ): Vangelis Filippas, Emilios Petrikis
Administration EU Funding projects SUB6.4: Vicki Triantafylloudi
Insurance: Karavias Underwriting Agency
Communication (ΕΜΣΤ): Ioakeim Theodoridis, Marigo Siakka, Iliana Siarga (graphics)
Social media: Sergio Zalmas
Communication consultant (Greece): Maria Tsolaki
International Press and PR: Pickles
Translations: Maria Skamaga
Digital printing: Nikos Paschalidis
Τhe animation You Are Not the Centre (Inside the Animal Mind) is a co-commissioned and co-produced by EMΣΤ and Copenhagen Contemporary, Denmark
Special Thanks: Marie Laurberg and Aukje Lepoutre Ravn (Copenhagen Contemporary), Jen Aldred, Daniel Talbot-Mason, Paolo Merico, Boudi Eskens and Galerie Onrust, Amsterdam, Amanda Kelly, Vanessa Saraceno
SPONSORS
GREECE 2.0
This work was initiated by EMΣΤ and forms part of Project SUB 6.4, “Actions to promote Greek cultural exports and strengthen the Greek cultural name by the National Museum of Contemporary Art Athens”, which is implemented within the framework of the National Recovery and Resilience Plan “Greece 2.0”, funded by the European Union – NextGenerationEU.
