I met Emma by accident when strolling around in La Rochelle. She sat in the Atelier Bletterie all by her own, reading a book. The gallery caught my attention, because it looked clean, well-sorted and minimalistic. When entering the gallery and looking at her artworks, the smell of the wooden floor flooded my senses, together with the sound of the squeaking wood. I liked the atmosphere of her exhibition, because I had a lot of time to experience her artworks.
I asked for her permission of taking pictures of her and she agreed. Following that, she asked if I could have a look at her camera, which seemed to have some issues. I checked everything I could, but was not able to fix the issue. “What a pitty” she said - she wanted to take some pictures of the exhibition before it ended. I offered to come back to take the pictures she wanted.
After a year in architecture school and an art history degree, Emma Rivet enrolled at the École Supérieure d’Art in Épinal. After obtaining her diploma, she moved to Besançon and settled in the Atelier Superseñor in order to deepen her focus on the art of engraving. Following a woodcut training course at the CIEC Foundation in Spain in 2021, Emma returned with renewed passion for this discipline. Since then, experimentation has been at the heart of her practice. Her prints reflect her desire to test new materials to bring out images with surprising and varied textures.
During the exhibition in La Rochelle, Emma exhibited her work around the imprint, whether the imprint left by plants or manufactured materials. From this research, she created images talking about nature, these inhabitants and their fragility.
Two days later I came back and had the chance to also talk to some of the visitors. When asking them for which one picture was their favourite and why, I got to know further levels of perception of her art.
Emma tries to keep the paper she uses as pure as possible - by not using scissors of a cutter to cut her prints. Instead she rips the paper. To me, this underlines her whole process: collecting samples like leaves for her prints, choosing the paper, applying the paint, creating the prints using a fully manual press and the preparation of her prints for the exhibition. Truely authentic.