Emma Talbot “Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going?” Venice Biennale Art Exhibition

Emma Talbot was born in 1969; she lives and works in London. Her works are exhibited in La Corderie at the Arsenal in Venice.

Emma Talbot chose silk as a characteristic medium and medium for her sculptures and large paintings to express a feminine, artistic language.

The large paintings and the female figures elegantly sheathed in silk fabrics painted by the artist touch on themes such as the origin of life and the meaning of life, with the help of mythological motifs or motifs derived from his personal reflections.

Emma Talbot used the song “Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going?” from the famous painting painted by Paul Gauguin in 1897-1898, these three great philosophical questions appear, without question marks, at the top left of this splendid frieze measuring 139.1 X 374.6 cm.

She answers it with her two sculptures of women with a snake.

The first is giving birth, holding a snake that resembles an umbilical cord.

A long work that evokes the divine words of Genesis, “you shall give birth in pain”, suffering that follows that human curiosity that pushed Eve towards evil, towards the transgression of the Law that had assigned her a place in the Garden of Eden.

The second, very dynamic, raises and extends an arm forward, dominatrix of the snake she holds under her foot, which seems to ask for an end to the suffering.

“What are we?” asked Gauguin; Emma Talbot takes it up by posing it like this: “Why do we think we can outwit Nature?” “Why do we think we can be smarter than nature?”.

This reminds us of the ambition of the original couple, who wanted to escape the natural Law of Eden.

This hereditary pride risks paying dearly, as shown by the large painting representing the panic of a couple fleeing the catastrophe of the world's end.

Emma Talbot