My sculptures, tapestries, and drawings present theatrical and sensual scenes of interdependence. The miniature scale is a twist on votive objects, which traditionally served as offerings to ward off illness. In contrast, my votives are impish and funny, and detail the ingenuity of people with disabilities. Many of my characters start out alone, but are later stitched into hybrid bodies: caregivers merge with patients, sideshow performers join troupes, and lovers and friends intertwine.
The sculptures also depend on each other at the material level: the clay body acts as a shaped frame loom for the handwoven textiles; and in turn, the tapestries bind the fragile porcelain limbs together. I weave directly onto the clay coils. Often the costumes reference jesters, a role historically allotted to disabled people. Other weavings and glazed drawings are narrative, providing backstory or disclosing secrets about the porcelain body. Sometimes the veil slips and the slapstick actor’s theater transforms into a more menacing operating theater. In each setting, the composite figures reveal the countless ways we adapt to support one another.
I install sculptures on hand-built furniture or hang items low on the wall to prioritize seated visitors. The tiny porcelain paintings, for example, are embedded deep in shaped windows cut into wood -- the scale of which insists upon private viewing: visitors must lean over and lean in close to peep the salacious scenes as if through a keyhole in a locked door. Wherever wood is used as a supportive surface, it is sanded down around the porcelain or textile to contort the grain as an extension of the image, and also to dramatize the delicate object’s impact on its surroundings. This communicates reverence for the figures depicted, and also for two of the most humble, foundational, and accessible craft techniques: coil baskets and coil pots.
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Em Kettner (b. 1988, Philadelphia, PA) is an artist and writer based in Richmond, CA. Recent solo exhibitions include Cyrano at Rebecca Camacho Presents (San Francisco, CA), Homebound at François Ghebaly Gallery (New York, NY), Sick Joke at Chapter NY (New York, NY), Slow Poke at François Ghebaly Gallery (Los Angeles, CA), The Eternal Worm at HARPY (Rutherford, NJ), and Play the Fool at Goldfinch (Chicago, IL). She’s participated in two-person and group exhibitions at F2T Gallery (Milan, Italy), Pangée (Montreal, Canada), Foundry (Seoul, South Korea), Pipeline (London, UK), Outer Space (Concord, NH), the MFA (Boston, MA), Winter Street Gallery (Edgartown, MA), Candice Madey (New York, NY), and Et al. Gallery (San Francisco, CA), among others.
Her work is in the permanent collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA; the Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA; the Ohana Center, Monterey, CA; the DePaul Art Museum and The Joan Flasch Artists’ Book Collection, both Chicago, IL. She has received the Wynn Newhouse Award, and is one of the seven fellows awarded the inaugural SHACK15 Art Prize (2025) for Bay Area Artists. In 2026, Kettner was named one of 16 finalists for the SFMOMA SECA Art Award.
Kettner’s work has been reviewed and published in Cultured Magazine, The Paris Review, ArtForum, Art in America, Sculpture Magazine, Contemporary Art Review LA (CARLA), HyperAllergic, Institutional Model, KQED, and Sixty Inches From Center. In 2023, Fulcrum Arts produced her interactive digital storybook, “Doctor, Doctor," an illustrated journey through history, myth, and patient-hood.
Em Kettner earned her BFA from the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, and an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She is represented by François Ghebaly Gallery in Los Angeles and New York.
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Selected Recent Interviews
Em Kettner in conversation with Sarah Faux for CULTURED
In conversation with Wes Hardin on her Solo Exhibition "Homebound"
In conversation with Bert Stabler for Institutional Model
Elizabeth Lalley interviews Em Kettner for her solo exhibition “Play the Fool” at Goldfinch