Biography

Born in Italy, lives and works in London since 1995. She studied Fine Art at Chelsea College of Art and Design. (BA, 2001-2004), (MA, 2004-2005).

Rossella Emanuele creative career started in the Performing Arts. She trained as a dancer and in the theatre, and from 1983 to 1995 performed with renowned international contemporary dance companies and in experimental theatre. Her dance and theatre background has informed her art-practice since the very beginning. Notions of movement, of event and a 'performative' element are strongly present in her earlier work.

More recent work explores ideas of time and duration, which she investigates through the processes of transformation of materials and the change in objects over time. She tends to use active, unpredictable materials, which are in continuous transformation and affected by changes in the environment. Through the use of materials that highlight ideas of impermanence and degradation Emanuele explores the relation between the ever-changing nature of life and the inner world of the subject. The tenuous balance between chaos and order and a reference to the body underpin much of her work. This manifests itself as an interest in the pivotal moment when objects disappear or dissolve thus encouraging the dehiscence of the object, allowing entropy to become the strength of the work.

Taking the form of traces of events, very evocative and with a sense of memory, Emanuele's work transforms emotions into physical form shifting between material forms and experimentation with media.

Her current practice considers the dynamic relationship between form and formlessness in Fine Art practice by focusing on the art making process. This area of enquiry has recently become the subject for a practice-based PhD investigation, she has undertaken with the research centre for Transnational Art, Identity & Nation (TrAIN) at UAL.

Additionally Emanuele works as Associate Lecturer for Sculpture and Drawing at Camberwell College of Art.

CURRICULUM VITAE pdf

STATEMENT pdf