A WINDOW TO EUROPE: THROUGH ART & LITERATURE
FEATURING EMILY FUSSNER
November 28 - December 14, 2021
Plain Sight DC and the EU National Institutes of Culture in Washington, DC present A Window to Europe: Through Literature and Art, a series of short exhibitions featuring eleven visual artists from the Washington, DC region who will create work in response to eleven books by European writers, as part of the 2021 Europe Readr project. In this exhibition, Emily Fussner creates work in response to Italian writer Tiziano Fratus’s book Every Tree is a Poet.
This exhibition is presented in partnership with EUNIC DC, the EU Delegation to the United States, and the Embassy of Italy in the United States, and the Italian Cultural Institute of Washington
ABOUT THE EXHIBITION: Inspired by Tiziano Fratus’s Every Tree is a Poet—an exploration of the deep human bond with nature, originally published in Italian—Emily Fussner captures and refracts the dappled light of a forest floor through large-scale prints of organic matter punctuated with fragile, transparent sculptures that cast shadows of Fratus’ poetic writing. Fussner channels her playful interest in the ephemeral nature of shadows by carving out of this urban setting an immersive space that, like the ground under a dense canopy of trees, changes from one moment to the next.
Emily Fussner is a visual artist based in the Washington, DC, area. Fussner received a BS in Printmaking from Indiana Wesleyan University (2013) and an MFA in Visual Arts from George Mason University (2019), during which she studied with American University’s MFA Studio Berlin summer residency at GlogauAIR and was awarded a Virginia Museum of Fine Arts Graduate Fellowship. She has exhibited her work in the US and abroad, and had her first solo exhibition in Washington, DC in 2019 at IA&A at Hillyer. Emily also enjoys teaching and arts administration, and currently works with Washington Project for the Arts as an event manager. Her studio is at Arlington Arts Center, where she is a resident artist.
Tiziano Fratus (1975) is a writer, poet, publisher, and traveler. In the silence of the Californian forests, he developed the concept of Homo radix (“root man”), the practice of alberography, and the discipline of dendrosophy, by which he lives today. His writing has been translated into many languages and is included in several international anthologies of poetry and prose. He is a columnist, makes botanical itinerariums and guides, and is also an enthusiastic photographer. For his writing about nature, he received the Le Ghiande di CinemAmbiente Award.
A Window Through Europe
This exhibition is part of A Window to Europe: Through Literature and Art, a series of short exhibitions featuring eleven visual artists from the Washington, DC region who are creating work in response to eleven books by European writers, as part of the 2021 Europe Readr project. Featured artists are Hoesy Corona, Alanna Reeves, Mike Thron, Michal Gavish, Julie Wills, MK Bailey, Antonio McAfee, Emily Fussner, Stephanie Williams, Lionel Frazier White III, and Sobia Ahmad.