8th edition, 2019–2022, Emma Talbot

Art is a space for thinking, reflecting and proposing ideas. It’s a way to explore our living experience. It reflects our times and suggests that we can think expansively.
Emma Talbot

For the eighth edition of the Max Mara Art Prize for Women, winning artist Emma Talbot (b. 1969), imagined a future environment where humankind encounters the disastrous consequences of late capitalism. To survive, it must look to more ancient and holistic ways of crafting and belonging that rethink old power structures and reconnect with the natural world.

The Age/L’Età, Talbot’s winning project for the Max Mara Art Prize for Women, took as its starting point the Gustav Klimt painting The Three Ages of Woman (1905), which the artist had the opportunity to see firsthand at the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea in Rome during her Italian residency. Klimt depicts an elderly woman holding her head in a pose of apparent shame.

In her work, Talbot reimagines this elderly figure as a heroine facing trials that resemble the twelve labours of Hercules. Rather than overcoming them through destruction, theft, trickery and murder – as the classical hero did – she employs care-centred solutions inspired by the twelve principles of permaculture, a practice which offers an ethical, sustainable way of living with the land.

The protagonist has the potential to reconstruct contemporary society, dismantling stereotypes about aging and power and finding new ways to respond to the climate crisis.

During the Italian residency organized by Collezione Maramotti, Talbot moved between Reggio Emilia, Catania and Rome, studying textile crafts, permaculture and classical mythology, and exploring historically significant places and institutions that informed her new body of work.

In Reggio Emilia, she learned more about textile techniques through workshops and visits to Modateca Deanna, one of the most important Italian archives of knitwork, and BAI - Biblioteca Archivio d’Impresa, the library and archive of the Max Mara Fashion Group.

In Catania, at Casa di paglia Felcerossa, Talbot directly explored the twelve principles of permaculture. Accompanied by artist Rosario Sorbello, she also explored Sicily, visiting ancient archaeological sites and gathering ideas for the representation of landscape in her new work.

The Age/L’Età

Whitechapel Gallery (30 June - 4 September 2022)

Collezione Maramotti (23 October 2022 – 9 July 2023)

The Italian residency organized by Collezione Maramotti led to the creation of The Age/L’Età, an installation made up of animations, painted hanging silk panels, a three-dimensional work and drawings. As with much of her work, Talbot inscribed the silk with texts addressing the themes of the exhibition, inviting viewers to question their own perceptions head-on. The subjects of these works on silk are inspired by Talbot’s travels in Sicily, where she visited volcanic landscapes and ancient ruins, studying the principles of permaculture. On a visit to Mantero Seta organized during her residency in Como, the artist learned about silk recycling, which she into her project. The use of recycled textiles and sustainable resources imbues Talbot’s work with questions about life cycles, renewal and permanence.

The central piece in the show is a twelve-chapter animation whose protagonist must face a series of trials inspired by the twelve labours of Hercules. Talbot taught herself animation during the 2020 pandemic, when the lockdown made it impossible to work in her studio.

The exhibition also includes a physical manifestation of the elderly central figure, in the form of a life-size sculpture made from soft stuffed fabrics. Materials designed by the artist in collaboration with Modateca Deanna and Imax, the Max Mara’s knitting division, were used for the figure’s wrinkled skin, which comes to resemble a suit of armour.

In 2021, Talbot was invited by CIRCA (Cultural Institute of Radical Contemporary Arts) to present an original work on the large screens of Piccadilly Circus in London, for which the artist created a series of animated films titled Four Visions.

Talbot also participated in the 59th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia curated by Cecilia Alemani, The Milk of Dreams/Il latte dei sogni (2022), presenting new works made in her Reggio Emilia studio with the support of Collezione Maramotti.