Teresa Emanuele in nature’s shadows

The silence and stillness of nature provides solace to her. An ashtanga yoga practitioner who is fascinated by trees because they are “eternal, still, move only because of the wind and constantly grow upward.”
When I met her, I was gently reminded of the one common feature you will find a great deal in one too many artists: The utter willingness to throw away any prospect of a “sensibly safe future”. Teresa Emanuele stands no exception to that rule.
She pursued a dream career in law, went on to be employed at Wall Street as a leverage lawyer with all the perks of a fancy office and trotting secretaries, only to bequeath it all for the love of a bigger calling.
“I was waiting for the day to be over, waiting to get out of the office and would be looking outside the window,” she confesses.
While the mind and body grudgingly labored in disinterest, New York City silently plucked at her artistic strings with the richness it offers in art, music and color. It all started with indulging in “touristic” photography, shooting typical photos of the Brooklyn Bridge and skyscrapers with a pocket-sized digital camera.
But fate changed its course with one chance entrance into an electronic store in New York, an adept salesman cleverly selling her a good lens camera and the rest as they say “was history”. New camera in hand, she started to click pictures relentlessly, focusing on the minutest of details in form and texture. While all her practical senses were lost to the charm of artistic freedoms, it was the encouragement of her friends that allowed her to look at photography more seriously, and she quit her lofty career on the heights of 54th street.
“I felt blessed for the feelings I got when I looked around. Those feelings were of gratefulness. But I was also concerned about how I would start and pay my rent. The art market was also affected during the recession when I quit my job as a lawyer and I knew I was starting a career where sales would be hard. I sold my concern and returned to Rome,” she says.
But all was still not as easy. Emanuele’s father who was also a practicing lawyer in Italy, was waiting expectantly for her to return and start work at his friends’ firms, who were all very excited to hire a US-returned, educated young Italian lawyer. But she soon broke it at the dinner table one family night and said, “Guys, I got news for you.”
“My father freaked out. His concern was my well-being. He always thought that having a job, working long hours and earning a mid-salary would make me happy. It was harder to convince my family because being a lawyer was a safe career. I was also making a lot of money and getting fired was highly unlikely,” she says with a chuckle in her voice.
But one does what one has to do. She received her first-break at a family-friends’ gallery that became the first of many exhibitions to come. Last week, Emanuele held her exhibition of 26 works that included two kinetic and one video installation, titled ‘QVOD VIDES, TOTVM (All That is Seen) at the Italian Consulate in Jeddah, in collaboration with the BMG Foundation’s Diplomacy of Art initiative.
The Foundation aims to bring two artists every year to Saudi Arabia from the east and west to encourage cultural, regional and artistic dialogue. All proceeds from the sales of artworks at the exhibition this year will support their “Safe Driving, Life Saving” campaign that will be implemented throughout the Kingdom.
“The desert does not have such a flourishing nature, so what I’m bringing is something that isn’t present here. I also investigated what the Qur’an speaks about regarding nature and how Islam has approached it. I was so surprised and found some amazing things like how nature is evidence of God’s existence. Nature is perfect, the way in which trees grow…the mechanism is so delicate and perfect”, Emanuele explains.
“I went back to my earlier studies in classical Greek and remembered the philosopher Seneca’s questions on the existence of God. Everything that is seen and everything that is not seen, he said, is God. I can only humbly try to portray that as evidenced by my eye.”
Emanuele says that her relationship with nature in photographs will always remain a constant feature, and she will be exhibiting a new collection of works next month in Riyadh at Alaan Artspace.
For more information on the artist, visit: www.teresaemanuele.com

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