Emma Safir: In Conversation
Thurs, July 31, 2025
7 pm
Emma Safir, Cheval Glass, 2024. Digitally printed silk, board, upholstery foam, mat, appliqué, house paint, needle lace, reflective thread, pewter, and Flashe paint, 57 1/16 × 37 1/4 × 2 in. (144.9 × 94.6 × 5.1 cm). Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; purchase with funds from the Photography Committee 2025.61. 
Emma Safir, courtesy of the artist and HESSE FLATOW, New York. Photograph by Jenny Gorman
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Contemporaries and Contemporaries Patron members are invited to this event. The invitation is for two individuals per membership household. Registration instructions will be provided by email.
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Floor 6, Sondra Gilman Study Center
Open to Contemporaries and Contemporaries Patron members
Contemporaries members are invited to an evening with artist Emma Safir, in conversation with Contemporaries curatorial liaison Kelly Long. Safir will discuss her multimedia practice and longstanding fascination with glitches, portals, privacy glass, and more. Her work Cheval Glass, which entered the Whitney’s permanent collection early this year, will be on view alongside a selection of collection works by other artists, selected by Safir for the occasion.
This program will take place in the Museum’s Sondra Gilman Study Center.
Emma Safir makes paintings using fabric manipulation, lens–based media, smocking, rasterization, upholstery, and digitization. Her paintings function as screen simulations, proxies, and portals. Safir is interested in hierarchies of labor related to gender and digitization, and in image-making apparatuses and distribution. Safir holds a BFA from RISD in printmaking and an MFA from Yale in painting and printmaking. She has had solo exhibitions at Blade Study, Baxter St at CCNY, SHIN HAUS at Shin Gallery, and Bunker Projects; and has participated in group shows at HESSE FLATOW, Galerie Nicolas Robert, Charles Moffett, Jack Barrett, Lyles & King, among others. She has upcoming solo exhibitions with HESSE FLATOW (2025) and Buffalo Institute for Contemporary Art (2026). Safir lives and works in New York City.