‘Hospes’

2023, September
Neighbor, Chelsea, New York, NY
Acker’s First Solo Show. Curated by John Silvis

Emma Lewis Acker works in a hybrid form—not quite collage or painting, not quite textile.

Born in the UK and raised in New Zealand, she moved to NYC to attend college. Acker began to make visual art in her 40s.

Using salvaged, industrial rolls of paper she found discarded outside a matzo factory in her neighborhood, Acker began experimenting with designs, shapes and textures embedded from her early years and developed her artistic process—painting large sheets in rich colors before tearing them to pieces and reassembling in rows of stitched color and pattern. 

Acker’s work is deeply connected to her role as an end-of-life doula, a career that has roots in her early years in the city. Arriving in New York as a teenager, she rented a room from an aging dancer in Greenwich Village and their relationship grew over 30 years, with Acker taking care of her friend at the end of her life.

Acker’s work explores the interdependent nature of life together—the mystery inherent in the relation- ship between the organic and mechanistic; the eternal and everyday; the earthly and the numinous.

www.emmalewisacker.com
@emmalewisacker
www.allswellinitiative.com

John Silvis is an art advisor based in New York City and Berlin.

The focus of his practice is on marginalized conversations of identity, spirituality and sustainability. Silvis writes for Artsy, CNN and PARNASS, and curates exhibitions in New York, Los Angeles, Vienna, Berlin and Singapore. In addition to building international private art collections, he is committed to facilitating art dialog through studio visits, artist interviews, and podcasts.

He is on the board of Foundation for Spirituality and the Arts.

www.johnsilivs.com @john.silvis.art www.fsa.art