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Emily Silver

@emilysilverstudio

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Speak to me @themiddleroomgallery 9/12
Living Echoes @smcbarrettgallery 10/13
Professor, Dept Cher @smcedu
Co-founder @latactilelab

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Thank you to everyone who made it out last night to the opening of 👄Speak to Me👄 at @themiddleroomgallery 💖

I premiered my new video, 🥽Diabolical Goggles, for the first time.

The title comes from Karen Russell’s short story “Haunting Olivia”, where a pair of “diabolical goggles” becomes a strange device for seeing what otherwise can’t be seen. I kept thinking about that idea while making this work about the devices we look through now, and how they shape not only what we see, but how we communicate.

🥽Diabolical Goggles 🥽 is made from a series of wild, layered videos I started making in 2015 created entirely on my phone using GIFs. I’ve been interested in GIFs as a kind of shorthand language: tiny, endlessly repeating images we use to stand in for emotions, reactions, jokes, desires, dread. Sometimes communicating something faster or more precisely than words can.

Our phones have become their own kind of goggles. We look through them constantly, sending images back and forth as a way of speaking. The GIF is ridiculous and disposable, but also incredibly specific. A tiny loop can carry humor, grief, embarrassment, longing, violence, tenderness, or absurdity without ever forming a sentence.

This video pushes that language into excess layering, repeating, colliding, and overwhelming these fragments until they start to become something else. Somewhere between language and image, communication and noise, legibility and complete chaos.

Huge thank you to Kaia King Hall @kingkongkaia for editing this strange world together, and to Max Cromwell @max.crom for scoring the video and collaborating with me to give it its sonic life. 💖

👓Diabolical 🥽 2026
Video with sound

🗣️Speak to Me🗣️
with Joy Ray + Emily Silver
@themiddleroomgallery
#contemporaryart #videoart #gif #karenrussell #diabolicalgoggles by @emilysilverstudio

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22 days ago

🪡SAVE THE DATE for an evocative, tactile two-artist show featuring @joyrayart and @emilysilverstudio together at The Middle Room—opening on September 12! Both artists will be present—don’t miss this dualistic exhibition about text and textile.🧵

#laartopenings #artinla
#joyray #emilysilver #themiddleroomgallery taken in Atwater Village, Los Angeles, California by @emilysilverstudio

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a month ago

🕸️🕸️🕸️🕸️🕸️🕸️🕸️🕸️🕸️🕸️🕸️🕸️

Almost finished with this MASSIVE tapestry. It’s been such an amazing process felting, sewing, tying netting, stuffing, quilting, weaving, grieving 🌀🌀🌀. This is the largest tapestry I’ve made yet, though there is now a larger one in the works.. this piece has also burst open the doors to some new 🆕 large sculptures.. feeling this even more now..

The Shape of It
Felt, shipping blankets, netting, thread, fabric, batting, Icelandic wool, Icelandic fish net, parachute chord, cotton, yarn
9’x6’
2024

Putting it all on the table in this new work. Excited to show you when we have an open studio November 17th. Or come by for a studio visit 🕸️⭐️🧃

🕸️🛥️🌀🕸️🛥️🌀🕸️🛥️🌀🕸️🛥️🌀🕸️🛥️👟👟👟

#sculpture #tapestry #weaving #felting #iceland #process #studio #wip #grief #contemporaryart #fiber #fiberart #contemporarytapestry #sewing #heavy #installation #artiststudio #dtla #losangeles taken in Los Angeles, California by @emilysilverstudio

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2 years ago

👀A closer look at the incredible details in Emily Silver’s work in SPEAK TO ME, on view through October 11. 🗣️Join us TODAY at 4pm for an Artist Talk to learn more about Emily’s process and practice—a happy hour reception will follow.🥂

. . .

Emily Silver is an artist working across textiles, sculpture, and installation who lives and works in Los Angeles. Beginning with processes of tracing, translation, and material transformation, her sculptural weavings translate language into structure. Silver embeds text, coded symbols, and shifting materials to produce forms that move between legibility and abstraction, where humor and grief sit uncomfortably close. Shaped by experiences of loss, bodily change, and broader instability, Silver’s work engages labor as a form of endurance. Fibers are bound, layered, and reworked through time-intensive processes that register care and persistence rather than resolution.

. . .

The Middle Room is open by appointment and on Saturdays and Sundays from 1-3pm while the exhibition is on view.

For press and sales inquiries or a checklist contact info@TheMiddleRoomGallery.com.

@emilysilverstudio #themiddleroomgallery taken in Atwater Village, Los Angeles, California by @emilysilverstudio

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20 hours ago

Speak To Me is an evocative, tactile exhibition that explores the intersection of words, fibers, and form—creating a complex, dialogue-driven pairing of two distinct multidisciplinary artists who use mixed soft sculptural media and language as subject matter. The text and textile works of Joy Ray and Emily Silver navigate the spaces between expression and material, abstraction and legibility, heartache and humor. Drawing from textile traditions while pushing into three-dimensional space, their works challenge the boundaries between text and image, asking viewers to encounter fragmented and reconfigured words not only as something to read, but as something to see and feel—where meaning hovers at the edge of recognition.

Within this shared conceptual framework, Ray and Silver move in strikingly different emotional and visual registers. Ray creates solemn, dense, monochromatic, contemplative works that reach toward what is remembered, inherited, and unknowable. Silver infuses her work with vibrant color, texture, and exuberant materiality, giving weight to sharp wit and tender vulnerability. The installation brings these distinct bodies of work into proximity, creating a dynamic exchange across the gallery space where intensity and levity, grief and resilience, the intellectual and the emotional exist in productive tension. The compelling physical surfaces carry complex narratives that extend beyond the literal meaning of words. Speak To Me considers what happens when language leaves the page and becomes physical—when words become both subject and visual elements, transformed into structure and surface while taking on functions and meanings beyond their literal definitions. The works invite close looking, revealing layers of meaning that emerge through the contrast between what can be understood and what can be felt, while leaving space for what remains unresolved.

•Artists•
@joyrayart
@emilysilverstudio
•Curator+Exhibition Designer•
@shannonraefincke

ARTIST TALK+RECEPTION: SUNDAY, OCTOBER 4, 4–6PM #themiddleroomgallery #artinla #laart taken in Atwater Village, Los Angeles, California by @emilysilverstudio

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2 days ago

“Lil Fucker” by Emily Silver

Come see this striking piece in our current exhibition SPEAK TO ME and join us for our Artist Talk & Reception this Sunday 10.4, 4-6pm.

Emily Silver
Lil Fucker
2026
Wood, Wool, Cotton, Embroidery, Acrylic
21x17x6

For press and sales inquiries or a checklist contact info@TheMiddleRoomGallery.com

#TheMiddleRoomGallery #ArtinLA
#ArtistTalk #LAArtists #AtwaterVillage taken in Atwater Village, Los Angeles, California by @emilysilverstudio

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3 days ago

📅𝗧𝗛𝗜𝗦 𝗦𝘂𝗻𝗱𝗮𝘆, 𝗢𝗰𝘁 𝟰
Join us at 𝟰𝗽𝗺 for an Artist Talk with 𝘚𝘱𝘦𝘢𝘬 𝘛𝘰 𝘔𝘦 Artists Joy Ray and Emily Silver, moderated by Curator Shannon Rae Fincke, followed by a Happy Hour Reception.

🖼️ 𝟰:𝟬𝟬 𝗣𝗠 – Arrival & Exhibition Viewing
🗣️ 𝟰:𝟮𝟬 𝗣𝗠 – Artist Talk
💬 𝟱:𝟬𝟬 𝗣𝗠 – Q&A
🥂 𝟱:𝟮𝟬 𝗣𝗠 – Drinks & Reception
🌇 𝟲:𝟬𝟬 𝗣𝗠 – Make it a full fall evening and head out for an al fresco dinner at one of our favorite neighboring Glendale Blvd restaurants like @allacquarestaurant, @bar_sinizki, @holybasil_la , @bonvivantmarketcafe , @spinalosangeles or @hailmarypizza! 🍽️

#TheMiddleRoomGallery
#ArtinLA
#ArtistTalk
#LAArtists
#AtwaterVillage taken in Atwater Village, Los Angeles, California by @emilysilverstudio

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5 days ago

Included in our show SPEAK TO ME is a powerfully dynamic anchor in the exhibition installation by Emily Silver.🧵🧶

As It Burns
2026
Wood, wool, cotton, netting, acrylic
59x51x17

Sales Inquiries: Info@TheMiddleRoomGallery.com

. . .

Speak To Me is an evocative, tactile exhibition that explores the intersection of words, fibers, and form—creating a complex, dialogue-driven pairing of two distinct multidisciplinary artists who use mixed soft sculptural media and language as subject matter. The text and textile works of Joy Ray and Emily Silver navigate the spaces between expression and material, abstraction and legibility, heartache and humor. Drawing from textile traditions while pushing into three-dimensional space, their works challenge the boundaries between text and image, asking viewers to encounter fragmented and reconfigured words not only as something to read, but as something to see and feel—where meaning hovers at the edge of recognition.

. . .

The Middle Room is open by appointment and on Saturdays and Sundays from 1-3pm while the exhibition is on view.

@emilysilver #emilysilver #laart #laartist
#artinla #themiddleroomgallery
Installation 📸 @false_artifacts taken in Atwater Village, Los Angeles, California by @emilysilverstudio

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7 days ago

Sunday plans?? Open today 1-3pm @themiddleroomgallery swing by to see Speak to Me and you can get a moment with my video Diabolical Goggles.

Speak To Me is an evocative, tactile exhibition that explores the intersection of words, fibers, and form—creating a complex, dialogue-driven pairing of two distinct multidisciplinary artists who use mixed soft sculptural media and language as subject matter. The text and textile works of Joy Ray and Emily Silver navigate the spaces between expression and material, abstraction and legibility, heartache and humor. Drawing from textile traditions while pushing into three-dimensional space, their works challenge the boundaries between text and image, asking viewers to encounter fragmented and reconfigured words not only as something to read, but as something to see and feel—where meaning hovers at the edge of recognition.

Artist talk next weekend Sunday Oct 4 4-6pm.

1st 📸 @false_artifacts by @emilysilverstudio

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8 days ago

SPEAK TO ME
Artists
@joyrayart @emilysilverstudio
Curator+Exhibition Designer
@shannonraefincke
Assistant
@carolineyuratich
Photographer
@false_artifacts

On View
Weekends 1-3pm thru 10.11.26

Artist Talk
Sunday 10.4.26 at 4pm

Sales Inquiries
Info@TheMiddleRoomGallery.com

. . .

Speak To Me is an evocative, tactile exhibition that explores the intersection of words, fibers, and form—creating a complex, dialogue-driven pairing of two distinct multidisciplinary artists who use mixed soft sculptural media and language as subject matter. The text and textile works of Joy Ray and Emily Silver navigate the spaces between expression and material, abstraction and legibility, heartache and humor. Drawing from textile traditions while pushing into three-dimensional space, their works challenge the boundaries between text and image, asking viewers to encounter fragmented and reconfigured words not only as something to read, but as something to see and feel—where meaning hovers at the edge of recognition.

Within this shared conceptual framework, Ray and Silver move in strikingly different emotional and visual registers. Ray creates solemn, dense, monochromatic, contemplative works that reach toward what is remembered, inherited, and unknowable. Silver infuses her work with vibrant color, texture, and exuberant materiality, giving weight to sharp wit and tender vulnerability. The installation brings these distinct bodies of work into proximity, creating a dynamic exchange across the gallery space where intensity and levity, grief and resilience, the intellectual and the emotional exist in productive tension. The compelling physical surfaces carry complex narratives that extend beyond the literal meaning of words. Speak To Me considers what happens when language leaves the page and becomes physical—when words become both subject and visual elements, transformed into structure and surface while taking on functions and meanings beyond their literal definitions. The works invite close looking, revealing layers of meaning that emerge through the contrast between what can be understood and what can be felt, while leaving space for what remains unresolved. taken in Atwater Village, Los Angeles, California by @emilysilverstudio

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13 days ago

Big thanks to all who joined us for a very warm and lively reception for Joy Ray + Emily Silver and SPEAK TO ME on Opening Night! 🗣️🧡🗣️

Curated by Shannon Rae Fincke, Speak To Me is an evocative, tactile exhibition that explores the intersection of words, fibers, and form—creating a complex, dialogue-driven pairing of two distinct multidisciplinary artists who use mixed soft sculptural media and language as subject matter.

If you missed it—or want to see the exhibit again without the crowd—be sure to stop by next weekend 1-3pm and/or save the date for our Artist Talk with Joy & Emily on 10.4.26 at 4pm.

@joyrayart @emilysilverstudio @shannonraefincke #themiddleroomgallery #artinla #laartscene #laart #laartists by @emilysilverstudio

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14 days ago

🗣️✨Last weekend was epic! 🗣️✨ Stop by during our open hours this Saturday and Sunday from 1-3 to see Speak To Me, featuring @joyrayart and @emilysilverstudio —curated by @shannonraefincke #artinla #laart by @emilysilverstudio

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18 days ago