Emma kates-shaw

I am a multimedia artist with an ever-expanding list of mediums. My current practice is focused on drawing, painting, tattooing, found object based sculpture, and site-specific installation. My work is embedded in and influenced by my close relationships—I am drawn to the portals that open through shared experiences of trust, connection and wonder. I aim to foster and honor these experiences through my work.

A core focus in my work is complicating and queering the narrative of what we leave behind—an essential part of my smaller-scale multimedia pieces is a deconstruction of the traditional practice of inheritance and heirloom. Within late-stage capitalism, there is joy in finding alternative economies and practicing acts of mutual care—my work reflects and refracts this joy, insisting on an anti-capitalist model of gift-giving as an act essential to our collective survival.

My work examines the tension between imposed order and natural entropy. In my site-specific work, I build portals to new ways of trusting and treasuring the natural world, and—by extension—each other. My installation work invites people to look closely and slow down in order to reimagine systems of value and worth. The durational nature of my installation pieces allows for human and natural forces to influence their form—and therefore meaning—over time. This work exists inseparable from its surroundings, encouraging connection between people, and between the built and natural worlds.

My work has been shown at The Frye Art Museum, SOIL Artist-Run Gallery, Seattle Art Museum’s Olympic Sculpture Park, The Space, Soft Spot, Ori Art Gallery, The Factory, Party Hat, List Gallery, Swarthmore Friends of the Arts and Ballinglen Arts Foundation, as well as various cafes and restaurants in Seattle, WA. I was a part of Lions Main Art Collective 2016-2019. I received a BA with a double major in Visual Arts and Sociology/Anthropology and a minor in Black Studies from Swarthmore College in 2016.