About

em north/em16 (they/them/theirs) analyzes figurative depiction through large-scale immersive paintings and drawings on paper. In 2009, em began exploring the possibilities of drawing on human skin through tattoo. Their artistic practice explores the multiplicities of identity as developed within internal and external representations of human form. Examining gender, class, and queerness via narrative storytelling is a consistent goal of Em’s artwork. They have worked in performative, digital, and printed media.

Born in 1978 in New Jersey, Em attended Rutgers Mason Gross for an MFA in Studio Art, Parsons School of Design for a BFA in Fine Arts, and Eugene Lang College for a BA in Writing and Sociology. In 2003, they co-founded riffRAG, a queer, anti-racist, feminist art magazine, and curated related art exhibitions. Their work has been exhibited in film festivals and galleries, including SOHO20, Leslie Lohman, Fountain Art Fair, Artists Space, Longwood Gallery, SF Arts Commission, Queens Museum of Art, New Fest, and Brooklyn Borough Hall.

Artist Statement

My work explores the multiplicities of human identity through visual representation. In my drawings and paintings, bodies are vessels for narrative. I honor the riffraff and societal outsiders who I consider chosen family. My interests lie in documenting real-life moments of underrepresented people and reinventing traditional artistic tropes. I examine how line work composed in everyday materials transforms into powerful language for unspeakable emotions. 

In Bo Series, I composed four drawings on pink paper measuring eight by eight feet. I presented an aerial view as an iconic shift in perspective. Each drawing depicts two androgynous figures interacting on a bed, tangled in an enigmatic form suggestive of a bedsheet. Minimalist graphite line work and white gesso against a bright pink background suggest equal importance of spaces where marks are present and absent. The pink of the paper is enticing, calming, suggesting warmth. These drawings came to me during the loss of a long-term romantic relationship. I was compelled by society’s ideal that a missing piece of ourselves can be attained through finding a lover. Lines between self/other in relationships often become blurred, rendering projection of our own psychies onto one another. I chose an equivocal form of self-portraiture, both autobiographical and universally relatable. People often ask me who these figures are when I am in the room: I provide viewers this intentional opening to diagram their own experiences upon my drawings. A gesso-white shape that connects two bodies is a space to be filled, a discovery to be made.

My work serves to document moments in our ever-shifting reality, mortality, time, and space. For over two decades, queer communities of color have enjoyed Riis Beach, a sandy strip behind an abandoned tuberculosis hospital in Far Rockaway, New York City. A few years ago, Riis Beach was gentrified by commercial businesses which enticed high-earning visitors to visit the area, progressively crowding out the existing queer community. I have spent many days at Riis Beach throughout this time of change. I developed an interest in how “safe spaces” provide freedom for queer people to love publicly. Queer joy exists alongside on-going loss as urban development shifts these spaces. A time of great change is a time to document what we hold dear. My drawings create nostalgia around these moments that are slipping away. For each drawing, I approached strangers, lovers, and friends lying out on Riis Beach and asked to create a portrait of them in the moment. I took a photo with an overhead camera and from it, created a large graphite drawing on paper. As in Bo Series, these beach portraits iconify otherwise private, unseen moments of connection. I further explored the emotion of color by color-blocking with a single pigment in each drawing. These pieces serve as documentation of the queer body in one moment of life, an echo of traditional portraiture within a reinvented frame.