Install Gate Of Horn Exhibition, Carl Freeman Gallery 2025
Emma Franks (b. 1972), visual artist and feminist, was raised in Essex and now lives and works in London.
Emma Franks works across multiple channels, painting, textile, performance, drawing, props, artist books, monoprints and dry points. There are also multiple cores to the work, with Lilith being the crossover of the jewish lived experience, feminism, motherhood, menopause and ‘illness’, all of which are strong on their own. Emma’s work is very intelligently informed within contemporary painting, ancient relics, feminist history, post Oct 7th reading and living discussion. Most importantly the work has presence, especially when curated by the art writer and curator Hettie Judah for the exhibition ‘Gates Of Horn, Myths of Resistance, Symbols Of Defiance’, for Carl Freedman Gallery Margate 2025.
Emma studied Fine Art at Brighton University (1994), Art Psychotherapy at Hertfordshire University (1999) and Studio Painting at Turps Banana Art School (2023). Franks previously worked within state education and the National Health Service, in addition to being a practising artist.
Current Exhibitions, Inhabiting Bodies AGBI, London
Previous Exhibitions,The Books Of Lilith, APT Gallery, Deptford, London, Gates Of Horns: Myths of Resistance, Symbols of Defiance’, Carl Freedman Gallery, Margate 2025, Bow Arts Open Call, Nunnery Gallery 2024. Bow, Blink, Safe House Peckham 2024, Ripe Banana Leavers Show 2023, Naissance Re-Naissance Unit Gallery London 2023, and Recreational Grounds VII (2023); Love, Celebration and the Road Ahead, TJ Boulting (2022); Mood Times Ten, Fitzrovia Gallery 2022; Arundel Contemporary 2018 and The Stratford Gallery 2018.
Lilith – as rebel and symbol of Jewish female power
It’s almost impossible when talking about my work to not mention Lilith. My work is deeply connected to lived experience and therefore my identity as a British Jewish woman. My identification with Lilith was born from this.
Preoccupied with finding strong Jewish female role models, it was during a visit to The British Museum Exhibition on Female Power that I chanced upon a bowl from 500 AD which showed a small drawing of Lilith in the centre. I was immediately drawn to this ancient depiction, repeatedly sketching her and including it in many of my works. It was after reading the book Jewish Identities In American Feminist Art by Lisa E Bloom, that I began to use Lilith as protagonist and eventually as the ‘founding mother’ in the performance and creation of the first feminist religion ‘The 13th Tribe’. Finding Lilith has been an important journey to reclaim and inhabit an identity as a strong Jewish woman, feminist and artist.
Since October 7th it has been very challenging to continue making work that uses Lilith as a symbol of Jewish feminist power. The sexual violence that was committed by Hamas on Jewish Israeli women and then following this the silence by the global feminist world to recognise these crimes has made a deep and lasting impact on my work. It severed almost immediately the energy and drive I channelled on this body of work. I was in no mood to make work about a rebellious, cheeky, courageous and determined protagonist such as Lilith.
Lilith does appear in work now but it’s different to the work I was making about her pre October 7th. That work belonged to a period of time where I could really focus on the energy and power of Jewish women. However now, post October 7th, Jewish women have been outcast from the feminist world. It’s hard to know where Lilith fits into this new world post October 7th as a British Jewish Feminist. I often ask myself what Lilith would do in this situation. I think she would stay in her cave, sure of her own convictions and remain true to herself. That is what I am doing. My studio is my cave and my work is my conviction and the most important thing is to not give up.
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