EMILIA NAWROCKI
is creating figurative feminist artwork in Detroit, MI.
Emilia Nawrocki is a figurative, multidisciplinary artist born in the suburbs of Metro-Detroit to catholic Polish immigrant parents, she earned her BFA at Wayne State University and is currently based in Detroit, Michigan. Emilia creates work using her own likeness to explore the facets of her identity, religious trauma, human evolution, and feminist beliefs through references to mythology and storytelling. Her work includes pixelated abstraction as a form of digitizing the traditional medium of oil painting and as an expression of human evolution of how the brain perceives and interprets images. Emilia’s work has been published in Runner Magazine and featured at multiple galleries in Metro-Detroit and beyond.
My work focuses on feminism and human evolution through topics of religious trauma and identity. Being a queer woman raised in a conservative, catholic, immigrant household brought upon feelings of isolation, shame, and confusion which led me to explore my feelings through my practice. I use humor, irony, and apes to convey my disagreement with the sexist tropes found in religion, art history, and mythology. Using myself as a model for these works, I tie myself to these beliefs by placing myself into the narrative, as someone who has experienced and been damaged by misogyny, either through explicit lived experiences or through the perpetual trickle-down of sexism into society. I re-contextualize the myths and stories told to me through my adolescence into a queer, feminist reinterpretation that I could have only wished to see as a young girl.