Emma Boittiaux
Le Temps De Madeleine, 2024, textile piece in linen hand-embroidered and beaded, 108 x 70 cm, POA
About this work:
This piece is an ode to home, the slower pace of life in the rural area where the artist comes from in Normandy, France. It is the memory of sheets drying outside in summer, and when you ask where your mum is, they say 'she is hanging the laundry outside'. It talks about generations of women and their intimacy through bed sheets. The linen used was gifted to the artist by her grandmother, who herself was gifted on her wedding day by her mother.
The intimacy of my grandmother’s linen runs through my work, bringing the rhythm of rural France to my process and embodying traces of a place I left a decade ago. The decision to embroider every bead by hand onto the linen ground is an ode to a rhythm where slowness has become an act of resistance.
About the Artist:
Emma Boittiaux is a London-based artist born in Normandy, France. She graduated from Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London in 2017. Her photograph from the series ‘Take Care Of Your Brother’ won the prestigious Portrait of Britain award in 2023. In 2025, she published her first story, ‘A Quiet Rape’. A mix of poetry and prose to explore three generations of women trying to find the words to speak about the unspeakable: war, intimacy, sexual violence and rape.
Emma works semi-autobiographically using photography, writing, embroidery, and print to examine collective experience. With ideas of safety and tenderness at the forefront, life’s bruises become manifest through an exploration of her own ties with the land, masculinity, violence and relationships.
Emma has been represented by Artiq since October 2024. Her work has been exhibited in various group shows in London, such as at the ICA or Hypha Studios, as well as in France during Les Rencontres Photographic d’Arles Off and published in magazines like We Are by the Royal Photographic Society WIP or PhotoVogue.