commune

＊Opening reception : 9/15 (Fri) 6-8pm

At gallery commune

We are having an exhibition of Lisbon based artist Ema Gaspar; “Hidden Place” starting on 15th Fri Sep.

—
“Hidden Place” represents my inner world which I explore to create a safe space to go through hard moments and personal traumas. Inside it lives the characters that you can see in the exhibition, each one related to a different intense moment I went through. I created them in order to look in a different way into that moment, so it’s not so horrible.

My process in creating characters starts with a shape or ornament that I find, for example on the street or on objects in my house that attract me. And in some way, I can understand the vibe of that object, and from there start creating their body and their unique personality.

This theme is something that I’ve been exploring for several years so apart from original works I created just for this exhibition, I’m also showing other works I have made previously for Mura Masa’s album “Demon Time” and other projects that live in the same conceptual realm.
— Ema Gaspar

Ema Gaspar is a freelance visual artist originally from Lisbon, Portugal, who recently moved to Tokyo.
Ema focuses on creating different planes of action and narratives inside her color pencil and graphite drawings, by arranging disconnected elements with everything that she acknowledges as intense and that which disrupts her.
Taking from her experiences she looks to accomplish an ‘atmosphere of memory’ in her images by exploring her inner self. Since childhood, she would make comics as a way of changing the route of the story of the anime she was watching, or to include herself in the series.
Her process tends to start with a shape or object that she finds interesting, assigning it a personality and inventing its body.Her clients include Bimba Y Lola, Mura Masa, Heaven by Marc Jacobs, The New York Times, Sony, Universal Music, Popeye Magazine, Brain Dead, Office Kiko, Kelsey Kreppel, Gracie Abrams, PC Music, and Gimaguas. Recently her work was shown at Art Fair Tokyo 2023.
www.emagaspar.com
Instagram: @ema_b_g