Emma Humberstone-Brown

Emma Humberstone-Brown is an interdisciplinary artist whose practice centralises motherhood and domesticity. By taking advantage of the restrictions she faced being in the domestic environment, this fuelled her investigations into the devalued and unrecognised position of mother and the domestic identity.

 

Unspoken to be unheard (2020) is a series of video performances. Based in the domestic environment, Emma shares intimate journeys that herself and other mothers have taken whilst in the birthing suite. This work explores the concept that a woman’s voice is never heard, not only is this a confrontation for gender roles but also the undermining of classes. Emma’s work is laced in humour and irony, with the unpredictability of the contributions from her daughter, however this does not overshadow the underlying issue that Emma is representing in these performances. The first video in the series, has been consciously framed to make the bed a focal point to this piece. The bed is not only a visual representation to the domestic space, it also signifies a metaphor that Emma uses to reference the constraints faced by women, from the initial point of being in a hospital bed giving birth, to how the bed is used as a negative associative object to women.