In her ecstatic paintings on silk, which appear in curtain-like sheaths, the British artist Emma Talbot makes the case that formal experiments can be politically liberating. Citing the French literary theorist Hélène Cixous’ 1970s-era theory of l’écriture féminine, Talbot conceives of textile and its formal characteristics as a means to articulate a feminist artistic language. Marked by the influence of postanthropocentric and posthuman thought, Talbot’s large-scale paintings, drawings, animations, and sculptures incorporate simplified figuration, mythological motifs, rhythmic patterns, vivid colours, and calligraphic texts to express aspects of Talbot’s personal and interior experiences as they extend to topics ranging from technology, nature, urbanism and ecopolitics to the pandemic and aging. Taking its title from Paul Gauguin’s historic painting of 1897–1898, which he painted within a moment of deep crisis and existential reckoning, Talbot’s Where Do We Come From, What Are We, Where Are We Going? (2021) takes on the human desire for escape in our environmentally catastrophic present. Implicitly critiquing Gauguin’s self-exile to French- colonised Tahiti, where his painting is set, Talbot covers her painting with texts that question what nature is and how – or if – it is possible to “return” to it ethically.
Madeline Weisburg
