“I like to retreat into a world that isn’t defining an ideal form”: meet artist Emma Kohlmann

Emma Kohlmann’s colourful, abstract and hyper-sexualised figures are difficult to forget. “In my watercolours I speak through movement via vignettes, shadows, windows or portholes. I like that there is an illusion of coincidence,” Emma tells It’s Nice That. The Massachusetts-based artist has been painting since she was a child, keeping journals and scrapbooks, but never anticipated making art on a regular basis.

Emma’s paintings may be nudes, but they certainly don’t follow a history of female representations designed for male pleasure. On the contrary, the artist challenges the male gaze through her depictions of figures masturbating and enjoying sex in different positions. “The body is political. There are aspects that are visible and others that are hidden. There are parts that are celebrated and others that are obliterated. I want it all to be acknowledged,” the artist explains. Taboos are confronted and shattered through the colourful bodies that seem to have materialised from spilled watercolours by some glorious feminist miracle. “I believe gender is a spectrum and can be undefined. It’s important for me to deconstruct what is learned. I like to retreat into a world that isn’t defining an ideal form” Emma says. These wonderfully lively figures aren’t confined to traditional gender norms. Her vignettes portray moments of desire with the characters acting as a device to depict enjoyment, love and thrill from sexual satisfaction. Who and what these figures are is irrelevant.

“I am always searching for new material to look at. It is crucial for me to branch out of the male Western canon. I think a lot of my art education has been self-directed. My most recent acquisitions have been a collection of stories by Audre Lorde and a book on Gee’s Bend,” explains Emma. Her art is certainly socially conscious and it comes as no surprise that she was “drawn to political philosophy and aesthetics” in college. Perhaps inspired by Lorde’s work, Emma’s art cherishes the power of the erotic, celebrating explicit sexuality as a means of empowerment.

In order to challenge conventions Emma has to deconstruct the body and reinvent sexual desire: “There is an uncontrollable aspect to my work that excites me. Depending on the texture of the paper and solubility of the ink, images will transform. They become fatalities of the medium, and I try to control as much I can. I find when I work figuratively, torsos, legs, genitals, arms, feet become expendable.”