Emma Safir in "A quest for opacity: Emma Safir’s sculptural digital collages"

Upon entering Emma Safir’s solo exhibition with Baxter Street at the Camera Club New York, one is surrounded by the looming presences of eight densely composed panels inhabiting the intimate gallery space. Hung on the walls or reclined against them, the photographic collages, printed onto fabric, stand out for their ambiguity: they simultaneously fall within the mediums of photography, painting, textile work, digital collage, and sculpture. A recent Yale graduate from the MFA in Painting and Printmaking (2021) known for her multi-media practice, Safir explores the tension between transparency and opacity in images and their role in influencing how we inhabit both physical and virtual spaces. Created through various digital and manual manipulations, the pieces in the exhibition—all made in the last two years—reveal the artist’s quest to unveil images’ inherent opacity.