Emily Mae Smith

Emily Mae Smith makes lively and humorous paintings that are full of allusions to art historical movements like Symbolism, Surrealism and Pop-art. Underneath this visual wit, Smith addresses timely and relevant topics like gender, sexuality, capitalism and violence, thereby making her paintings multi-layered. One of the recurring characters in her work is a broomstick figure that she started using because it allows her to paint a domestic tool associated with women’s labour, a painter’s brush and a phallus symbol at the same time. This figure continuously evolves throughout her oeuvre and takes on a broad variety of forms and guises.

-LVB