Emilie Houssart

Lives and works in Poughkeepsie, NY, USA

Artist statement

Symptoms of human disassociation from the ecology of our own planet pervade our language, our behavior, and our physical and virtual environments. Our celebrated conscious intelligence proves destructively basic in relation to the sophisticated interdependent systems surrounding us. In a variety of commercial and ‘wild’ settings, I illuminate socially normalised constructs that contribute to our numbness to nature, fostering renewed respect for other life forms and presenting alternative models of success. Drawing on absurdist theater, I design provocative interventions for public spaces that aim to actively reconnect people both physically and psychically with the land surrounding them. Through performative sculpture, installation and printmaking projects, I collide complex natural systems, read by our logical minds as mere chaos, with the basic geometry characteristic of modern human activity: our rectilinear homes, our vast fields, our borders, and our unilateral visions of progress. My biodegradable sculptural materials include forest debris, suburban shrubbery and such menial life underfoot as industrially farmed potatoes and the nourishing earth itself, which we label ‘dirt’. Ongoing projects include 'Earthrisings', a series of square-topped forest floor protrusions that present viewers with a billion subterranean microorganisms at body level, violating our sanctuary of ‘unspoiled’ nature with an urban virus; 'Potatocube', a nomadic totem that serves as a...

Artwork