EMMA LUCY LINFORD

Emma Lucy Linford plays with air.

Architectural forms shape and border air, while the human body fills garments into architectural forms. Emma’s work walks between these two volumes, air and body, using structural materials yet liberating them from their conventional weight. An airy structure with no volume or a volumized structure with no gravity. Her metal sculptures seem to be translucent as if she knits with air and wire.

        Her artistic process involves crafting sculptures through knitted dimensional or flat structures, revealing either a form or a delicate layer of skin. The creation of the structure is done on the ground but is always presented floating in the air. A huge amount of time and effort goes into creating these sculptures. It is a slow process of knitting lasting somewhere between three months to a year.

        These themes resonate with Emma's background. She was initially trained as an architect but diverged from that path to explore more intimate and personal expressions through sculpture. Emma herself describes her demeanor as shy, an emotion that often seeks refuge. This dichotomy between the internal and the external is also present in her creations. It's as if, even when the “fabric” is removed, the underlying structure lingers, birthing a sense of intimacy and trying to get as close as possible to the tissue. You can feel the last breath of the structure, but yet it transforms into something new, a rebirth.


For Emma Lucy Linford, clothing transcends its functional role to become a symbol of protection. Her artistic exploration revolves around the concept of the over-garment – clothing that serves as a second skin. More importantly, it functions as a guardian. Serving as both a vessel of intimacy and a societal signifier. It communicates the essence of the body it enfolds. It acts as a messenger of the body it conceals.

 Text by Dori Azoulay