SECOND SKIN
For Emma Lucy Linford, clothing becomes a symbol of protection. Her work revolves around the notion of “re-clothing”. It is about clothing as a second skin, the one we put on and take off as needed, but above all the one that protects and shelters us. Both a showcase of intimacy and a social marker for others, it acts as a messenger of the body it conceals. As attempts to exist and resist, particularly against the diktats on the aesthetics of the body, the pieces of the Lausanne-based artist are as much protective layers for the body as they are artifices or reflections of the spirit that hides within. Made of brass wire or crocheted garbage bags, her delicate and airy works float in space, giving an impression of lightness. Emma Lucy Linford’s exploration of the crochet technique gives rise to her visual language. This installation – composed of two suspended pieces – is a reflection on the identity and status of the artist in contemporary society. While the first (The Artist (or the Tomb), 2020), halfway between a sarcophagus and a protective cocoon for the body, was created in the midst of confinement, the second (The Boudoir, 2021) – produced a year later – was conceived by the artist as an echo of the latter, as a refuge. Both were made to measure, and each in its own way represents a layer of protection for the whole body, in which the artist can withdraw in complete privacy or see the inner void sublimated. Because when the artist is not there, her body is only suggested, perceptible only by the void it forms, floating in space. Emma Lucy Linford symbolically refers us to the idea of “clothing” as a protection for the soul.
Emma Lucy Linford (Switzerland, 1992) lives and works in Lausanne. After a year studying at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure de Beaux-Arts in Paris, she obtained a bachelor’s degree in interior design at the Haute Ecole d’art et de design [FB1] (HEAD) in Geneva in 2015. Her work has been presented in group exhibitions in 2018 at the Ateliers de Bellevaux, then at the MUDAC – Musée cantonal de design et d’arts appliqués contemporains (Lausanne) and at the Museo Villa dei Credi (Bellinzona) in 2020. More recently, her work as been shown at the Galerie C (Neuchâtel) in 2021 and at Valentin61 (Lausanne) in 2022.
