Manning is a soul giver, a pagan biomimetic creator; and she looks to tell the kinds of stories that can be choreographed as poetic vignettes of movement and sensitive interactions between creatures and worlds, considering the species and the interdependence between them. This earth which we retrieve, forage, matter from, provides Grace Emily with organic and inorganic matter to animate an intimate dialogue between artist and material which revives and renews the relationship between land and being. And alike tending the land, Grace tends a systemic unity: the artist, the being, the species, the spirit, the land but also the technology behind the working of this complex that is our life. The magic secrets we can’t see are there, as her work is charged with unseen research. 

 

With a background in performance design, Grace Emily Manning moves through media fluently, it being live action film, sculpture, animation or large scale drawings that enable the viewer to tune in with her visions. The emotions of a place are paced by the scientist in her, but uttered by the powerful visual language she uses to birth the stories we urgently need to action. She captures the shamanistic spirit of care, empathy and unity in the spectrum between earth and species, and her surrealistic pieces show the imagination and ecological knowledge of the sci-fi eco-machine paradigm.