bio
Emily Rice (b. 1993, Birmingham, AL) is a multidisciplinary artist based in the Southern US. Growing up and living in Tennessee, Alabama, and Georgia, Southern landscapes and histories consistently make their way into their practice with motifs and materiality. Rice explores material agency, sustainable relationships, hybridized language, and hopeful dreaming through a queer lens. With drawing, painting, digital media, sculpture, and installation, they elevate materials into new realms depending on perceived connections between sites and objects. Investigating and reshaping materials is their method for transfiguration and a way to gather time together. Their works are manifestations of a believed and beloved reality, examining the fascia between relationships.
Rice earned their MFA in Painting and Drawing from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. They received a BFA in Art and Spanish from Birmingham-Southern College and studied Advanced Liberal Arts at the Universitat de Barcelona. Recent exhibitions and research include Capricornus with Jules Jackson at the St. Andrews Center (2025), IMPETUS curated by Maritza Bautista at Laredo College (2025), Riddles of the Ground with Sandra Amoabeng at Texas A&M International University (2025), Gleaning the Spirit at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville Ewing Gallery of Art + Architecture (2023), Givens at the Candoro Marble Building (2022), and installation work as a Fulbright Creative Research Scholar to learn more about their Honduran heritage (2023-2024). Emily currently lives between Tennessee and Texas where they make art and teach Painting and Drawing at Texas A&M International University.
statement
Ideas and spirits intertwine with materials. I make sculptural drawings guided by a deep dedication to belief and desire for sustainability. Through a patient and meticulous process, I find meaning in the intricate layering of objects, locations, cultural heritage, queerness, sexuality, and personal convictions. By transforming a diverse range of materials, including plastics, textiles, wax, wood, cement, soil, ceramic, plaster, iron, and found objects, I establish an intimate and essential relationship between myself and the materials I use.
I seek out connections with the landscape and its elements. Repetitively making is a transcendent experience, allowing communication with spirits and ghosts beyond my own consciousness. Through this laborious process, I gain a deeper understanding of the transparent presence I leave behind in materials while they, in turn, reveal their unique essence. This creative process is not just about making; it is a spiritual practice reinforcing my beliefs and understanding of the world beyond the physical realm.
As an artist, I am fascinated by the relationship between place, space, and materials. Believing in the necessity of collaborative learning and collaborative making, I strive to intimately bond with the materials I use to fully consider their agency. I hope to promote a type of radical knowledge exchange and tender community care. My practice is a method for hopeful dreaming to critically assess how things are and collectively work towards a different possible outcome. It is a call to action through the crafted and found.