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#WeAreCreatives Student Spotlight: Emily Orta

Discover and celebrate the work of the School of Art & Design's graduating students.

    A black and white photo of a woman in a wood holding an animal skull
    Emily Orta BA (Hons) Fashion Communication and Promotion

    We Are Creatives Student spotlight

    Emily Orta BA (Hons) Fashion Communication and Promotion

    My time at NTU

    During my time at NTU, I’ve really enjoyed having access to a wide range of art and design facilities. Having access to the dark room and photographic equipment was incredibly valuable in helping me to develop my skills and interest in photography. I’m also very grateful that NTU gave me the opportunity to take part in an exchange program at FIT New York. Now that my studies are over, I’m planning to move to Venice to work for a small e-commerce company that specialises in artisanal craft and design. As well as this, I’m looking forward to spending more time producing my own ceramics; which is something that I’ve taken an interest in during the last year.

    A black and white blurred photo of a woman in two different animalistic poses
    Emily Orta BA (Hons) Fashion Communication and Promotion

    My work

    Through intimate self-portraits and experimental photography, I take audiences on a journey exploring Identity and Body. 

    My photographs investigate the relationship between material bodies and immaterial identities. Like the raw material from which a sculpture is produced, the human body is a tactile organic form that changes over time. As it is shaped and reshaped it takes on an intangible identity that haunts the body like a spirit or lonely soul. The material informs the immaterial and, simultaneously, the immaterial informs the material. They are locked in a contradictory relationship: a paradox of the separable and inseparable. 

    By examining and challenging my own female identity, my photographs are intimate responses to my own identity questions, exposing a highly-personal perspective through eight pillars of investigation: Animate/Inanimate, Representation, Performance, Abstract, Conceal/Reveal, Duality, Surhuman and Re-Birth. 

    These pillars function diachronically, conveying an unfolding transformative process. Each stage is an avenue of exploration, through which a process within the life cycle is investigated and transition to the next phase is prepared. The structural relationship between the pillars invokes both the passage of time and the malleable human body itself.

    Published on 5 July 2021
    • Subject area: Art and design
    • Category: Student Showcase; School of Art & Design