EMMA WALTRAUD HOWES
Emma Waltraud Howes oscillates between movement and form to create time-based performance installations that merge soft sculpture, sound and improvisation with fallible objects. Her transdisciplinary practice unfolds through reconfigurations of body and space, shaped by her background in dance (ballet, baroque opera, modern, and baguazhang—an internal Chinese martial art), performance theory, and visual arts within a conceptual framework.
Guided by an acute observation of gesture, Howes develops an expanded choreographic practice that integrates public interventions, kinesthetic and architectural research, and speculative graphic scores—drawings that chart the evolution from concept and intention to depiction and effect. These graphic systems serve as a foundation for concentrated encounters, or ‘serious play’, where embodied experience gives rise to hyper-glitch operas and Cadavre Exquis—chimeras that celebrate comprehensive failure and foster alternative perspectives. Rooted in intersectional feminism and posthumanism, Howes constructs radical mythologies that challenge dominant histories, reframe narratives through a decolonial lens, and amplify marginalised voices—reimagining power, identity and agency through live performance installation and cinematic works.
Her works have been exhibited and published internationally, including Critical Shifts (Barin Han, Istanbul 2024); The Time it Takes (Musée d'Art de Joliette, 2024); Manageable Matter (Kunstverein am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz, Berlin 2023); ImPulsTanz, Vienna (2023); and the 11th Berlin Biennale (Martin-Gropius-Bau, 2020). She was the Canada Council for the Arts resident at ACME Studios in London (2018), and the Counseil des arts et des lettres artist in residence at the Künstlerhaus Bethanien in Berlin (2014). Her monographs include Scores for Daily Living (2020); Ankyloglossia (n. tongue-tie) (2014); and An Archive of Accident Gestures (2011). She holds an MFA from Concordia University and Bauhaus-University, a BFA from the Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design and is a guest professor at the University of the Arts, Bremen.
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