Today we’d like to introduce you to Emilía Turner.
Thanks for sharing your story with us Emilía. So, let’s start at the beginning, and we can move on from there.
I started out writing – language was the medium most intuitive to me as a kid. I grew up in a rural, conservative town in San Diego County and wrote think pieces about social justice issues in order to validate my (very not conservative) experience in the world and to organize political and personal chaos into something more concise. I studied to be a journalist, was writing tons of academic theory about gender and queer sexuality, as well as writing for music and lifestyle publications – and in my last year of undergrad took a sharp left and became much more interested in making visual art.
I realized I’d boxed myself into something I saw as rigid and scrambled into mediums that were more abstract, starting with poetry and then photography, later branching out into illustration and painting, zine-making, healing arts, performance, sculpture, and music. As I tried new mediums, I became addicted to the process of learning, which is kind of where I’m at now. Currently, I oscillate between analog photography, sound art/experimental music composition, and performance. Right now, the most interesting part about art-making to me is the phase of having no idea what I’m doing, yet experiencing these magical moments of bringing something into being that feels guided by both my hands and universal mystery.
This paradox of excitement about experiencing something new and fear of the unknown is something I’m always working with and draws me into a more experimental and spontaneous approach to the work I’m doing. I love researching and falling down internet black holes – at this point, I’m self-taught at most of what I do. I like having the option to use whichever medium best reflects the concept or idea I’m trying to illustrate. I consider myself a process artist and try to emphasize process over product.
We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc. – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
I wouldn’t say it’s been a smooth road, in fact, a huge part of my process is feeling humbled by how much I don’t know and how much more there (always) is to learn, which is a scary place to be in for a perfectionist like me. So a lot of my internal work is learning to submit to the unknown, which is way easier said than done. I also start one million percent more projects than I finish (the blessing and curse of Gemini), so I feel like there’s always twelve million things to do. Maybe this is normal though? I’m a harsh self-critic.
So most of the bumpy parts of this road have been psychological, when it comes to the work itself, I love every part of it – experimenting and refining, getting deeply immersed in an idea, making connections that weren’t there for me before. I love getting into the technical and scientific side of what I’m doing, particularly in electronic music and alternative process photography; physics and chemistry. The feeling of being obsessed with a technique or idea and linking it conceptually to another, and another, seeing it show up in synchronicity and seemingly unrelated parts of my life – is one that I chase.
So, as you know, we’re impressed with Liminals, Black Mountain Airport – tell our readers more, for example, what you’re most proud of as a company and what sets you apart from others.
My primary practice is fine art photography or photo-based image-making. I work with film and traditional darkroom processes, as well as alternative techniques like Mordançage, cyanotype, and chemigram. I treat photography as a ritual – I see these antiquated techniques as a kind of alchemy that demands a deep connection with the elements of light, silver, copper, hydrogen.
This forms the basis for a performative methodology that I try to imbue in all of my work. Analog photography is inherently slow-paced and finicky, and I love the challenge of slowing down in order to approach it meditatively and with intention. This isn’t to say I don’t appreciate the convenience and immediacy of digital, even camera phone photography – I use these tools all the time, and there’s definitely beauty to be found. But for me, there’s nothing like the forced immersion of the darkroom.
Much of my subject matter is earth-centric, usually depicted abstractly and with a hint of altered states. I try to point to the incredible beauty and diversity of the natural world in hopes that a viewer might find a bit more appreciation for the earth and act accordingly. I hunt for contradictions – flesh-like textures in nature, heat, and cold occurring simultaneously, human influence on a landscape. I’m obsessed with the idea of liminal spaces, where opposites are interwoven and exist together.
On that note, my music, sound art, and performance work is housed under the name Liminals. I also have a band with my partner called Paradot. I make sound compositions for ritual-based performances that incorporate elements like fire and chemistry; a recent example is a collaborative piece I did for a show in Iceland, a ritual burning of a copper chloride solution (it turns green and blue!) inside of an installation by the Danish artist Gustav Hoder. I also enjoy scoring short films and am working on putting together my first solo album.
Another new project I’m excited about is a record label and publishing house I founded with the musician Zach Cooper and artist Tina Carlisi called Black Mountain Airport. We specialize in multimedia conversions of music, visual art, publication, and performance – focusing on bringing forth interesting and sensory physical releases in hyper-digital industry. We joke that our releases are #unpromotable because they’re often pretty involved and morph into many different forms by the time we’re done with them. But it’s so fun to work with them, and I love that we don’t pressure ourselves to conform to a structure.
So, what’s next? Any big plans?
More residencies, more showing my work, more community, more time in the darkroom, more playing music live, more things to try, more things to get better at.
Contact Info:
- Website: http://emiliadturner.com
- Email: [email protected]
- Instagram: http://instagram.com/liminals
Image Credit:
Piotr Kołakowski, Katherine Guillen, Jodoli
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