About
Emma Difani is an interdisciplinary artist from New Mexico living in Chicago. She earned a BFA from the University of New Mexico and is currently pursuing her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Emma is a board member of RIPG(Radical Intersectional Print Guild) and co-founder of Connect:Collect, a biannual international print exchange. Weaving together sculpture, printmaking and drawing, Emma cultivates spaces for attention to the discards of daily life. Appreciation of materials and collaboration guide her process, working from scrap rather than scratch. Her work tends to the tiny, disputes accepted systems of value and sieves through the materials we touch, take, keep and abandon to consider how these things build identities, relationships and ecosystems.
Statement
Weaving together sculpture, printmaking and drawing, I create spaces for attention to the set-assides of daily life. With art as a navigational tool, I reassemble systems of value, prioritize the tending and sieve through the materials we touch, take, keep and abandon to consider how these things build our identities and relationships. Pulling cartographic symbols from the ever entangled constructed, grown and social environments, I create large, layered drawings on paper and sculptural assemblages with attention and openness. This layering reflects my training as a printmaker and mirrors overlapping ecosystems and communities(mineral, animal, botanical) in which I am embedded. Using a visual language combined of the readily recognizable, cryptic characters and expressive marks, I layer and aggregate images and things to affirm there is no by-production, only co-creation.
I both delight in and dread the abundant discards that are the cause and precondition of mass production. I am both curious and eager to tend to the matter at hand, or more often at foot, and terrified by the rising tide of our excess. I muddle the hierarchy of labor invested whether mechanical, biological or elemental. Eyes glued to cracked concrete and inset rectangles of dirt and leaves, I forage beer tabs, buzz balls, acorn caps, flattened cans, dandelion stems, plastic shards, seed pods, rusty washers and wires. These materials become stencils, tools and content for drawings. Or they are wrapped in paper skins, cradled in scrap wood or hold each other in sculptural assemblages. The ethos of working from scrap not from scratch extends from the street to the studio, kitchen and home, saving paper pieces, onions skins, corn husks, egg shells, can tabs, the residue and the container of equal esteem, preciousness and potential.
That plastic bottle we pitch aside lays a foundation for ever escalating acts of uncare, for plants, people, minerals, animals, that coexist in a robust weave of relations. In a system that reveres economic and material hyperproduction, moving fast and breaking things, I prefer to crawl and collect the leftovers. I notice, I delight, I invest in and attend to, the small, the trashy, the marginally useful, the bent, the rusty, the dusty. These things layer together, building homes for each other, sharing a spirit of care, of preciousness, but not a capital P, white gloved precious, but a familiar and daily preciousness, a lived in veneration.
Education
2026 Masters of Fine Arts in Printmedia, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois
2014 Bachelor of Fine Arts in Studio Art, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, New Mexico
Exhibitions
Solo and Two-Person Exhibitions
2026 tend ur matter, SAIC Galleries, Chicago, Illinois
2020 Encircle, Myriad Gardens, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
2020 Waystation: Emma Difani and Malcolm Zachariah, Studio Six, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
2018 Still Moving: Emma Difani and Kacie Erin Smith, Sanitary Tortilla Factory, Albuquerque, New Mexico
2018 Wild Places: New Work by Emma Difani, Untitled Artspace, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
2017 Land Listening, Pacific Exhibits, Albuquerque, New Mexico
2013 Echoes, BFA Honors Thesis Solo Exhibition, John Sommers Gallery, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, New Mexico,
Selected Group Exhibitions
2025 Push/Pull, RHAA, Chicago, Illinois
2025 By Degrees, Chicago Sculpture International Project Space, Chicago, Illinois
2024 Processing Ambiguity, Research House for Asian Art(RHAA), Chicago, Illinois
2020 24 Works on Paper, Oklahoma Visual Arts Coalition, Traveling Biennial Exhibition, Oklahoma
2019 Print on Paseo, Juried Printmaking Exhibition, Paseo Art Space, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
2019 Pink, Henry Zarrow Center for Art and Education, Tulsa, Oklahoma
2019 Please Touch the Art, McKeon Center for Creativity, Tulsa, Oklahoma
2019 Girls Club V. 2.0, The Art Hall, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
2019 Momentum 2019, OVAC, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
2019 FRESH Oklahoma, Landon Thomas, Tulsa, Oklahoma
2019 Paseo Annual Juried Members Show, Paseo Art Space, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
2019 Convergence: Challenging Anthropocentrism, McKeon Center for Creativity, Tulsa, Oklahoma
2018 24 Works on Paper, Oklahoma Visual Arts Coalition, Traveling Biennial Exhibition, Oklahoma
2018 Lynette Atchley, Kyla Bruegel & Emma Difani, Hulsey Gallery, Oklahoma City University, Oklahoma
2018 ARS VISIBILIS IV. GENIUS, MECA Mediterráneo Centro Artístico, Almeria, Spain
2018 Artists at Work, Little D Gallery, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
2018 Assembled in Place, Women's Studio Workshop, Rosendale, New York
2018 Guerrilla Art Park 2018, Oklahoma Contemporary, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
2018 Where Abouts, Vitrine Gallery, Albuquerque, New Mexico
2018 Steamroller Woodblock, Artspace at Untitled, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
2018 Momentum 2018, Oklahoma Visual Arts Coalition, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
2017 Printmaking OKC, The Nursery Art Center, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
2017 12 x12, Harwood Art Center, Albuquerque, New Mexico
2017 Nasty Women, Current Studio, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
2017 Print//Make, Inpost Artspace, Albuquerque, New Mexico
2016 Fleeting, Open Space Gallery, Open Space Visitor Center, Albuquerque, New Mexico
2016 Banned, The City of Santa Fe Arts Commission Community Gallery, Santa Fe, New Mexico
2016 SURFACE: Emerging Artists of New Mexico, Harwood Art Center, Albuquerque, New Mexico
2013 13th Annual University Print Society Postcard Print Exchange and Exhibition, Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa
2012 UNM Undergraduate Juried Show, John Sommers Gallery, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, New Mexico
2012 UNM Print, John Sommers Gallery, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, New Mexico
Residencies and Awards
2019 Featured Artist, Installation with Malcolm Zachariah, Oklahoma Contemporary, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
2019 Merit Award, Paseo Arts Juried Member Show, Paseo Art Space, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
2018 Artist-in-Residence, Oklahoma City University, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
2018 Creative Project Grant Recipient, OVAC, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
2018 Finalist, FEAST Grant, Paseo Arts Association, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
2018 Artist-in-Residence, Artspace at Untitled, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
2018 Excellence in Artistic Achievement, Momentum 2018, Oklahoma Visual Arts Coalition, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma,
2016 Collaborative Printmaking Residency, Herekeke Arts Center, Taos, New Mexico
2016 Up and Up Award, SURFACE: Emerging Artists of New Mexico, Harwood Art Center, Albuquerque, New Mexico
Press and Publications
2018 Artist at Work, "Artist at Work: Emma Difani", Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, September 2018
2018 The Weekly Alibi, "At Home in the World", Albuquerque, New Mexico, May 2018
2018 The Oklahoman, "Artist Seeks out 'Wild Places in Urban Spaces'", Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, May 24 2018
2016 Harwood Art Center, "Surface:Emerging Artist of New Mexico", Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, June 2015
Professional Experience
2019 Juror, Print on Paseo, Paseo Art Space, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
2019 Instructor, Screenprinting: On and Off The Page, Oklahoma Children’s Theatre, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
2019 Curator/Co-Founder, Connect: Collect, International Print Exchange and Exhibition
2019 Curator, Volume:Print as Object, Nona Jean Hulsey Gallery, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
2019 Logistics Committee Leader, Steamroller Print Festival, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
2019 Printmaking Demonstration, Oklahoma Arts Day, Oklahoma State Capitol, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
2019 Committee Member, Momentum 2019, OVAC, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
2018 Adjunct Instructor, Printmaking, Oklahoma City University, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
2018 Intern, Women’s Studio Workshop, Rosendale, New York
2018 Art Moves: Public Art Demonstration, Arts Council of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
2018 Mentor Artist/Instructor, Printmaking, Artspace at Untitled, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
2018 Guest Curator, Annual Mentorship Exhibition, Artspace at Untitled, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
2018 Panelist, Works on Paper Printmaking Panel, Artspace at Untitled, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma