Artist Statement
I make performances and ephemeral installations that incorporate bodies, movement, sound and idiosyncratic experience to exhibit uncertainty as live sculptural material. At the heart of my practice is a distrust in the ideal of truth, which manifests itself through collaborations in which the co-construction of knowledge is key. By working with a diverse range of people in a very personal way, we are able to create our own truths through collective experience. I am therefore continually redefining notions of authorship while affirming my role as an artist. I am particularly interested in examining the imprecision of language and the myriad ways it can be delivered, understood and misunderstood. In my work, language becomes a simultaneously mental, visual, auditory and sensual experience. Meaning is never limited to a single path.
For the past year I worked with a stuntman, a stutterer, a sign-language interpreter, an actor, an auctioneer, a stand-up comedian and a child on a performance piece that explored language as a prop onto which we project meaning. Each actor was carefully chosen for his or her real and performed relationship to language: they described, transcribed, interpreted and gestured within a landscape of vivid colorful forms that were reminiscent of elementary school classrooms, signs, semiotics and minimalist art.
“B!RDBRA!N” was originally conceived of for the Pacific Standard Time Public Art & Performance Festival as a live response to the legacy of the historical French artist Guy de Cointet. It incorporated the true story of Alex the parrot, an African Gray who was the subject of a thirty-year avian language experiment. It was later developed for the NOW Festival at REDCAT, while the set and rehearsals were on view through the windows and closed doors of a non-profit space called Public Fiction for one month, and changed on a nightly basis. To mark the end of the exhibition, viewers were invited to transition from being spectators to active participants in a re-structured “Epilogue” performance that allowed them to physically enter the set and become part of the work as decisive co-directors.
“B!RDBRA!N (Addendum)” is a short film that I made in conjunction with the live performance. It is a stand-alone work that is comprised of an accumulation of details filmed during rehearsals whose order is dictated by an abstract soundscape comprised of various language experiments.
Many of these same ideas were initially explored in a time-based installation called “Everything, Nothing, Something, Always (Walla!)” that involved a free-standing sculptural stage, roughly twenty actors and an accordionist. A one act live theatrical play looped uninterrupted for three hours on the stage, and varied slightly with each repetition.
In 2011 I restaged Peter Handke’s 1966 anti-play “Offending The Audience” at the Velaslavasay Panorama. This 45-minute lecture about theater must, by necessity, take place in a theater while attempting to be as un-theatrical as possible. I cast seven children between the ages of six and twelve in order to remove the audience from the artificiality of a critical discourse of artifice by introducing real play into a theatrical play. The childrens’ lack of pretense allowed the audience to experience the piece empathetically. This twist on Handke by no means resembled a conventional children’s play. Rather, it was a conceptual gesture that was staged in a conventional theater.
Currently, I am working on a series of live performances that will be presented at LACMA in February 2014. The entire series will be based on the work of the largely unknown Joan Brossa (1919-1998), a Catalan poet, playwright, graphic designer and visual artist who dealt with the essence of words, the uselessness of language and the absurd in everyday conversation. I feel a strong connection to Brossa’s work because, much like mine, it is obsessed with language, impregnated with theater, and it always employs a transdisciplinary vision of culture and the arts, and the performance arts in particular. Genres did not exist for Brossa, nor did boundaries between the arts. While I have entered into a creative dialogue with historical works in the past, this will be the first time I present my work in a museum. By taking the theatrical out of the theater, I will be breaking formal boundaries and broadening this vision of culture.
My practice exists across and between disciplines. I attach myself to writing, theater, choreography, sociology, psychology and education and use them as tools in the rich territory of art. Every project results in the creation of a physical and visual lexicon that is unique to the particular human exchanges experienced. This insistence on communication and personal interaction results in volatile works that aim to provoke real rather than symbolic consequences.
EDUCATION
2007 – 2009 University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA (MFA)
1994 – 1998 Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, NY (BA)
AWARDS
2012 California Community Foundation (CCF) Fellowship
2012 Center for Cultural Innovation (CCI) ARC Grant
2009 Foundation for Contemporary Arts Emergency Grant
2007-2009 USC Roski School of Fine Art Teaching Assistantship
SELECTED PERFORMANCES
2012 I Want To Break Free, ENSBA, Lyon, France
2012 B!RDBRA!N (Epilogue), Public Fiction, LA, CA
2012 B!RDBRA!N, REDCAT, LA, CA
2012 Never It’s Now Or, Mains d’Oeuvres, Paris, France
2012 B!RDBRA!N (Preface), Pacific Standard Time, The Blackbox, LA, CA
2011 Art In The Parking Space, LAX Art, LA, CA
2011 Offending The Audience, The Velaslavasay Panorama Theater, LA, CA
2011 We Play Nothing, REDCAT, LA, CA
2011 Love Letter To A Surrogate Stage 2, MUHKA, Antwerp, Belgium
2010 Emily Mast by Emily Mast & Jerome Bel, Human Resources, LA, CA
2010 Love Letter To A Surrogate, Torrence Art Museum, LA, CA
2010 Cold Feet, Yaddo, Saratoga Springs, NY
2010 This is This, AS220, Providence, RI
2010 To Crack A Nut Is Truly No Feat, Parks Exhibition Center, Idyllwild, CA
2010 The Show Must Go On! (Again), Five Thirty Three, LA, CA
2009 Everything, Nothing, Something, Always (Walla!), Performa 09, NY, NY
2009 Yes, Exhibition Art Initiative, NY, NY
2007 *, USC Roski Gallery, LA, CA
2006 This Is the Rhythm of the Night, Lake Wesserunsett, Skowhegan, ME
SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2012 B!RDBRA!N (Epilogue), Public Fiction, LA, CA
2010 It will never be known how this has to be told, Steve Turner Gallery, LA CA
2009 Everything, Nothing, Something, Always (Walla!), USC Roski Gallery, LA, CA
2008 Looking For Something New To Long For, USC Roski Gallery, LA, CA
2005 You & Me Simultaneously, Samson Projects, Boston, MA
2002 Remember, Paris Project Room, Paris, France
SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2013 LA Existencial, LACE, LA, CA
2013 It’s Over There, Simone Subal Gallery, New York, NY
2011 The Patter of Tiny Brains, 323 Projects, LA, CA
2010 Volume, At1 Art Projects, LA, CA
2009 Exquisite Corpse, Mihai Nicodim Gallery, LA, CA
2008 Strange Ranger, Circus Gallery, LA, CA
2008 Egoesdayglo, Five Thirty Three, LA, CA
2007 Eureka!, USC Roski Gallery, LA, CA
2006 Border Mates, Pasteleria Sta. Teresita, Guadalajara, Mexico
2004 Nuit Blanche, Péniche Antipode, Paris, France
2004 Super Salon, Samson Projects, Boston, MA
CURATORIAL PROJECTS
2008 EGOESDAYGLO, Five Thirty Three, LA, CA
RESIDENCIES
2012 Headlands Center For The Arts, Sausalito, CA
2010 Yaddo, Saratoga Springs, NY
2007 unitednationsplaza, Berlin, Germany
2007 Mountain School of Art, LA, CA
2006 Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture, Skowhegan, ME
1999 Vermont Studio Center, Johnson, VT
LECTURES / PANEL DISCUSSIONS
2013 Otis College of Art and Design, LA, CA
2012 ENSBA, Lyon, France
2012 University of California Riverside, Riverside, CA
2012 ESAAA, Annecy, France
2012 CALARTS, Valencia, CA
2010 University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), LA, CA
2010 Audience Experiments: Contemporary Art in the Age of Spectacle, MoMA, NY, NY
2010 Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, NY
2010 Idyllwild Arts Academy, Idyllwild, CA
2009 Montana State University MFA Program, Bozeman, MT
PRINT & PRESS
2013 Jori Finkel, “Clues to his mystery hang on the walls: the LA art world rediscovers the odd legacy of Guy de Cointet”, Los Angeles Times, Jan 10
2012 Catherine Wagley, “10 Most Memorable L.A. Art Events of the Year”, LA Weekly, Dec 19
2012 Benn Widdey, “REDCAT’s New Original Works Fest Brings on the Women!”, LAist, Aug 9
2012 Cindy Marie Jenkins, “N.O.W. Festival at REDCAT”, Aug 5 (video)
2012 Ed Rampell, “Experiments Inside REDCAT’s Lab – NOW”, LA Stage Times, July 17
2012 “Oeuvres”, MATERIAL, Summer
2011 100 Artists to Watch, Modern Painters, Dec 2011/Jan 2012
2011 Roselee Goldberg, Performa 09: Back to Futurism, Performa, 2011
2011 David Senior, Ed. “Adventures”, Emprint Press & Printed Matter, Edition of 200
2011 Charles Mallison, “Offending the Audience at the Velaslavasay Panorama”, LA Record, April 11
2011 Mialka Bonadonna-Morano, “Rebels With Applause: Offending The Audience at Velaslavasay Panorama, Laist, March 26
2011 “Q & A with Emily Mast on Restaging Peter Handke’s ‘Offending The Audience’”, East of Borneo, March 22
2010 Cecilia Alemani, Ed., The X-initiative Yearbook, Mousse Publishing, 2010
2010 Carol Cheh, “Perform! Now!” Chinatown, Friday Night, July 30, 2010
2010 Carol Cheh, “Love Letters to a Surrogate, presented by Warren Neidich, Torrance Art Museum”
2010 “Emily Mast”, performanceartworld.wordpress.com, June
2010 Tyler Coburn, “Future Greats: Emily Roysdon, My Barbarian, Vishal Jugdeo, Emily Wardill, Emily Mast”, Artreview, March
2009 Graham T. Beck, “Performa 09 in Review: Part 1”, Frieze, December
2009 WFMU / Night People Interviews Emily Mast, November 5
2009 Jonathan Maghen, Ed., MFA 2009, University of Southern California, LA, CA
2007 Timothy Ivison, “Notes on Eclat”, Facsimile Magazine, December
2006 Textfield, July issue, Los Angeles, CA, USA
2006 Pazmaker, Issue N*2, Mexico City, Mexico