B. 2004 lives & works in Leicestershire, UK
Emily Hought's work explores awkwardness, using live solitary characters as guises to navigate vulnerability, humour, and performative identity. She investigates how identity is shaped and reshaped through rituals of dress-up and self-presentation. Inspired by the Theatre of the Absurd, she embraces discomfort, silence, and the surreal as tools for self-reflection and disruption, deliberately shifting away from dialogue to emphasise gesture.
Using abstract collages as points of origin, she creates masks, costumes, puppets, and dolls that draw inspiration from masquerade, historical fashions, play, and the carnivalesque. These tactile objects—made from papier-mâché, cardboard, and textiles—carry a comforting nostalgia and provide an immediacy that allows her to work with spontaneity and humour.
Emily’s characters aim to embody experiences of otherness that blend discomfort with playfulness, where the awkward is not something to overcome, but something to sit within. There’s an inherent playfulness in dressing up, and she leans into this, curious about the uncanny vulnerability in allowing oneself to be seen.