Emma Fineman
we were honored to capture the incredibly gifted artist Emma Fineman just 12 days after a skin removal and breast lift procedure. she had lost a good deal of weight and wanted to feel better in her new body. we spoke of the magazine’s goal of stripping away, baring and revealing ones true, authentic self. shooting together felt like a safe and beautiful place one of new found strength and self love. so scroll down as Emma shares heartfelt words on her journey that inspired the powerful paintings she has created which are on display at Alexander Berggruen gallery in NYC, from now till June 24th. this is her first solo show.
‘The Bare shoot was such an important day for me psychologically, which I really wasn’t expecting. I was 12 days out from my surgery and l still had all my bandages and drains fully attached to me. Everything was so fresh and it was my first time being out in the world in this new body. One that I had worked really hard for in so many ways. It was the first time I really experienced euphoria within my identity and my body. I felt both hunky and beautiful. I felt like my divine masculine and divine feminine were in harmony for the first time in my life. I have a tattoo of a Hilma Af Klint drawing on my left arm. A white Swan identically intertwined with a Black swan. My shadow self in harmony with my conscious mind. Allignment is such a powerful feeling and it’s such a huge part of what inspired the work in this show. That day and the experience of it certainly informed this collection of my paintings.”
“It’s funny because when you first reached out to me and told me about Bare and what your publication stood for, you didn’t know until then that I was about to undergo a major surgery. We shared ideas and how this felt like such an amazing opportunity for me to finally be seen. To share the raw and real parts of my experience and to be Bare. I was thrilled about the idea. We talked about how we are now witnessing a time in history where women don’t need permission or a co-signer when making major decisions about who they are. We can make our own money, have our own bank accounts and do to our bodies what we feel is best. It’s powerful, and so freeing to live in this exact moment. So often the conversation around plastic surgery and certainly boob jobs is that it is for the male gaze. Mine wasn’t about that at all. I wanted to work with a female surgeon who didn’t insist on implants as I knew I didn’t want them, and who understood the female gaze. Her methodology was percice. She took so much time making measurements based on my body and its proportions. I felt like she was a master draftsman and I was some kind of painting.”
“You invited me to Batsheva’s boutique and I remembered being so excited. Even that was so significant to me. Years prior my sister had been invited to model for Batsheva and I went to the fitting and I rememberd thinking at the time that this was one of the best designers. She was playful and whimsical and was exaggerating shapes in a way that felt like it was for women. They felt rooted in history with this extravagance that felt like a contemporary version of camp for a modern city girl. It was perfect! All these years later to be invited to wear these clothes and especially on that specific day was beyond meaningful to me. I felt celebrated in those clothes.”
“The biggest part in all of this was that is came from an incredibly hard period for me both mentally and physically. Being closeted, loosing a childhood friend to suicide, medical assault, all things that were creating significant chronic inflammation. I gained a lot of weight over those seven years. I lost communication with my body. I loved my shape in new ways and really found so much pride in being plus sized, but also was experiencing such strong physical pain that I wasn’t really living in my body. I was totally disconnected. It took me three years and coming out as a lesbian to free myself. I shed 90 pounds and that felt like shedding a whole person. A person who felt stuck and unable to access my desire, my wants my wishes. Unable to advocate for them. Completely stuck in situations and with people who I didn’t feel understood me, and it’s becuase I didn’t understand myself. I was so inauthentic and my relationships in that time felt that way too. How could they not be when I wasn’t fully in the room.”
“This day in New York walking the streets with my chest out fully free dressed feminine, masculine, campy, witchy, magical- I had finally come back to myself and allowed myself to be seen. To both show up in my authenticity and to be seen fully in that skin. Not censored or afraid of being pornographic. Quite the opposite. I think my fear of being prayed upon as a women and seen as a sex object is what kept me hiding for so long. It’s why I made myself as big as I could because that felt safer somehow. Protected from that kind of attention. But I was in and out of the hospital constantly, my body was deeply unsafe. And now in this state, fully bare in New York I’ve never felt safer. I know the power of my body, its ability to heal, to change to adapt and I trust it. It got me through. Just as my shadow self did. And now I’m free.”
photos/makeup: tina turnbow
emma wears her own clothing and pieces from Batsheva
