Emma Talbot addresses to us humans from the perspective of the animals. You Are Not the Centre (Inside the Animal mind) animals would tell us if they could. But somehow humans tend to believe and behave as if they are the centre not only in amimals’ world but in the whole universe.
Emma Talbot’s Human/Nature (2025) is a monumental textile installation made of painted silk and an accompanying animation film entitled You Are Not the Centre (Inside the Animal mind), commissioned for EMST. In it – as in many of the artist’s works, there’s a female protagonist – a version of the artist herself – who is always searching and exploring, trying to make sense of the world. In this work, Talbot leaves the human sphere to enter the animal mind, trying to understand the world viewed from non-human perspectives. The figure lives through different sensory experiences as she encounters the olfactory world of the dog, the mind of a spider that plans to make complex webs or the visual perceptions of deer and the anxiety responses of captive birds etc.
Emma Talbot talked to Ex_posure and Eleni Zymaraki.
