Multimedia Performance Artist
emilyhought.art@gmail.com
Emily Hought's work explores awkwardness, using live solitary characters as guises to navigate vulnerability, humour, and performative identity. She investigates how identity is shaped and reshaped through rituals of dress-up and self-presentation. Inspired by the Theatre of the Absurd, she embraces discomfort, silence, and the surreal as tools for self-reflection and disruption, deliberately shifting away from dialogue to emphasise gesture.
Image courtesy of Nyklaus Thorn
Using abstract collages as points of origin, she creates masks, costumes, puppets, and dolls that draw inspiration from masquerade, historical fashions, play, and the carnivalesque. These tactile objects—made from papier-mâché, cardboard, and textiles—carry a comforting nostalgia and provide an immediacy that allows her to work with spontaneity and humour.
Emily’s characters aim to embody experiences of otherness that blend discomfort with playfulness, where the awkward is not something to overcome, but something to sit within. There’s an inherent playfulness in dressing up, and she leans into this, curious about the uncanny vulnerability in allowing oneself to be seen.
Education & Writing
2022-25 BA (Hons) Fine Art, First Class Honours | Loughborough University
Performance as Liberation: An Exploration of Imaginary Worlds in Performance Art
Dissertation submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the award of Bachelor of Arts degree of Loughborough University
Academic year 2024-2025
Supervisor: Dr Ahren Warner
Exhibitions/Performances
Exposure, 2024| Loughborough University Fine Art Gallery| Loughborough
Intersecting Realities,2024| Loughborough University Fine Art Gallery| Loughborough
Up The Stairs, 2025| Hesse Staircase| Loughborough
Dawdling in Mime, 2025| Loughborough University Fine Art Foyer| Loughborough
Masking, 2025| Two Queens Gallery| Leicester
Skint Joy Austerity Cabaret, 2025| The Real Ale Classroom| Leicester
Fine Art BA Degree Show 2025| Loughborough University| Loughborough
Grants/Awards
Winner of the Parry Cup Art Prize 2022
AFF (Artists Futures Fund) Breakthrough Artist Fellow 2025/26