Emmeline de Mooij

Amsterdam based artist Emmeline de Mooij (NL, 1978) creates immersive and therapeutic installations through which she explores themes around loneliness, care, emotional labour, eliminating the body from social processes, and more recently motherhood and family relations and gender roles. De Mooij has previously gained attention with (inter)national exhibitions such as: The Guest Mattress, Andriesse Eyck Gallery (2020) Mother Art Prize exhibition, Cromwell Place London (2020), CosmoFeminism, Fortuna Wetten Berlin (2019) #Satisfying Slime, Andriesse Eyck Gallery (2018), Cure Park, Amsterdamse Bos (2017), Art in Therapy, Centraal Museum Utrecht (2016), Manifesten, Museum Kranenburgh, Bergen (2015),  Facing And Touching Treatment Method, De Centrale, Brussel (2014), Legion TV, London (2013) and Daegu Photo Biennale, Korea (2012). She holds a BA from the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam (2006) and an MFA from Bard College (2014).

 

Poging tot een Dutje, 2018 (foto’s Ivonne Zijp)

(Artwork description) In the installation Poging tot een Dutje (Attempting a Nap) the visitor also becomes performer: (s)he activates the work by receiving a massage from an electrically-powered massage chair. On the screen opposite of the chair ‘slime videos’ are being played. Slime videos are clips posted to Instagram that show a slimy substance being kneaded by a woman’s hands; some depict plastic objects disappearing into the gunk. The videos fall under the popular YouTube genre ASMR (Automated Sensory Meridian Repose), videos in which women address the viewer, whispering softly, and give them ‘personal attention’ by mimicking the act of hair-washing, or taking an optician’s eye test. In the accompanying voice-over of the video, we hear the artist’s soothing voice addressing the less soothing issues of the performance of ‘emotional labour’ by women, persistent myths surrounding motherhood, the association of touch with irrationality, loneliness and the elimination of the body from social processes.