Paige Emery

To Recalibrate with Tree Divination, 2022

Oil paint on recycled acrylic, metal, wood chips

Water Scrying, Flower Dreaming, 2023

Flowers, glass, water

These two works are part of an ongoing series described by the artist as ‘a poetics of divination.’ The steel sculptures and mandala act as conduits to the ancient practice of dendrochronology — the science of dating with tree rings or tree divination — reading trees as a future-looking practice, and water scrying — an ancient divinatory method of reading water in a meditative state to ask guidance for the unknown. These time reading or divinatory methods, based on an ecological approach, offer a perspective of nonlinear time and a participation with temporality that inspires a shift in consciousness. The deep blue hue of the orbs, appearing throughout Emery’s work, symbolizes the unconscious or pre-cognitive mind and summons a meditative state where change becomes possible. The site of the installation offers viewers a space to respond to present surroundings and visualize how certain ecological futures might be brought into the present.

Paige Emery is an artist, herbalist, and gardener exploring the ecological body through ritual interactions that weave worlds. Her work sutures healing rituals and critical ecology, mysticism and theory, poetics and praxis.
This has taken shape through a variety of forms: art installations for more-than-human divination systems at Biosphere 2, Arizona, healing sound pieces at HKW, Berlin, plant rituals for memory gardens at Biennale Gherdëina, Italy, guerilla gardens as acts of social resistance and care in Los Angeles.