As a 21-year-old woman, I am trying to understand the world around me while grappling with what it means to be in this body and how I present myself through mannerisms, language, and wardrobe. My work captures snapshots into raw moments in time. Using figurative oil painting I explore my anguish towards embodying the persona of an idealized woman, with seemingly endless knowledge but bluntly obvious naïveté. In my artistic practice I use conventional feminine tropes to create a contemporary female narrative. I apply a range of physical perspectives and create multiples of the same figure in order to demonstrate and contemplate relationships between the female figure, womanhood, self, and the world around that sustains these roles. 

I construct photos of myself and other female friends among an arranged installation. With consideration of the framing of the image, I place items that visually signify elements of my personality in relation to sexuality, extraversion, and domestication around the figure. Feminine colors, poses, styles of clothing, among other signifiers represent the outward facets of my personality that I explore as dependent or independent of the gaze. My work is a physical artifact of oil paint that is created through technological processes of photo editing and produced by themes of social media. I depict a desire to escape this realm of objectification while maintaining a shame about living here. The differing perspectives and manipulation of the image allow the viewer to become a voyeur of my chaotic inner dialogue visually represented as pattern and repetition. The way the composition is separated into sections, picked apart and repeated, detailed as well as blurred represents my own mental processes and emotions. 

Emma Greenberg (She, Her, Hers) | @emmaxgreenberg