Emer O'brien

Dr. Emer O’Brien is an Installation Artist and the Professor of IHP Photography at Deree College, the American College of Greece. Her work is primarily concerned with Modernity. It refers to a particular relationship to time, one characterized by intense historical discontinuity or rupture, openness to the novelty of the future and a heightened sensitivity to what is unique about the present. Started in 2003 ‘Contemporary Amnesia’ is a series of analogue photographs and lightboxes characterised by specific forms of response towards both Modernization (technological, economic and political processes) and Modernity (the social conditions and modes of experience that are seen as the effects of these processes). The title ‘Contemporary Amnesia’ refers to the predicament of a simultaneous process of construction and disintegration - the Modernist tradition represented by a ‘Change of State’. Dr. Emer O’Brien was born in Dublin, Ireland and since 2019 she has lived and worked in Athens. She has been exhibited at museums and galleries around the world, including: Art Athina Pop Up, The King George Hotel (Athens), The National Museum (Pozarevac), Art Appel Galley (Athens), King Peter’s House Gallery (Belgrade), The Russian Cultural Centre (Belgrade), The City Museum (Podgorica), EIGHT Gallery (Athens), The Royal Academy (London), Andrew Edlin Gallery (NYC), Art Platform LA (Los Angeles), Laura Mars Gallery (Berlin), Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery (London), The Wapping Project (London), Kunsthal KaDe (Amsterdam), National Gallery (Prague), The Whitechapel Gallery (London), Williamson Art Gallery & Museum (Birkenhead), and The Dutch Textile Museum (Tilberg). Dr. Emer O'Brien studied a BA (HONS) at Oxford Brookes University followed by an MA at Goldsmiths College and then a MRES at The London Consortium. In 2021 she was awarded ‘Artist of the Year’ by The Belgrade-Adriatic Biennale.