ArtistMalig, Emma

Artist Years1960-living

Artist NationalityChilean, French

TitleSilencio XXVII – X/X

Year1987

MediumPrint > Lithograph

DimensionsComposition: 9.4 X 7.5 inches
Sheet: 15 X 10 inches

Accession NumberRC2211

Notes1.
Emma Malig was born in Santiago, Chile. Exiled from Pinochet’s Chile in 1981, her multidisciplinary work is driven by themes of displacement, memory, and cartography. She integrates poetry, delicate handmade paper, and light to create poetic, imaginary globes and maps.

Malig completed her four-year degree at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Paris. Her final student works were produced under the mentorship of masters Vladimir Velickovic and Abraham Hadad. These early pieces focused on raw expressions of human form, identity, and the heavy emotional weight of political exile.

Upon graduating in 1987, Malig was awarded a prestigious study grant and artist residency in Berlin, Germany. Working out of the historic Künstlerhaus Bethanien, she pivoted heavily toward printmaking.

These 1987 prints heavily explored themes of geographic division and borders, highly influenced by living in a still-divided Berlin. Following the residency in Berlin, she spent five years in Kyoto, Japan. There, she studied the traditional art of handmade washi papermaking from a sensei, which fundamentally shaped her medium. Her artworks frequently take the form of "imaginary maps" and globe installations that explore human migration, transience, and the "nostalgia of a country". Blending traditional Japanese paper techniques with painting and sculpture, she often draws upon old maps, working into them with sea sprays, silhouettes, and fragile horizon lines.

2.
This lithograph, part of a suite of 33, was created in 1987 at the prestigious Künstlerhaus Bethanien in Berlin.