Aga Khan Museum's video: Emily Jan: Field Trip Artist Residency V-Log 4

One of seven artists participating in the inaugural Field Trip Artist Residency, fibre artist Emily Jan gives us a peek into her work and processes as an artists. This v-log entry, the final one in a group of four, talks about her most recent exhibition discussing diaspora, racism, identity and creativity, especially in the time of COVID. About the Residency: The Field Trip Artist Residency is a 6-week online program designed to make space for and to support diverse artists contending with the repercussions of racism to create and facilitate discussion. In this first iteration, participating galleries in consultation with their networks invited artists to shape residencies that emphasize agency and openness, with space to create work, engage in dialogue and explore individual and collective practices. To learn more, visit: https://www.fieldtrip.art/field-trips... About the Artist: Emily Jan creates intricately crafted, hyper-realistic installations of found objects inhabited by both handmade and found flora and fauna. Her primary materials are wool, reed, cloth, silicone and resin. These environments, like enterable museum dioramas, mix elements of high culture with low culture, science with mythology, and history with current affairs. The creatures, wondrous and monstrous by turns, feel real but are entirely handmade. They are not taxidermy, but are emotionally believable to the point where they are often mistaken as such. In this age of mass extinctions and climate change, the importance of being able to envision places we may never personally see, to hold space for them in our minds and in our hearts, is ever greater. To this end, the work both sculptural and literary seeks to transport some of that distant experience to the viewer – to stretch the boundaries of our collective imaginings in order to encompass the unseen, to learn to love the unknown as well as the familiar, and ultimately to strive to weave all these strands into a larger narrative about what it means to be a human living in a world roiling with turmoil and catastrophe but yet which is still mysterious and beautiful.