Room to Become

KULTURPREISE DES LANDES NIEDERÖSTERREICH 2025

In November 2025, Stroude participated in a residency at AIR Niederösterreich. She was invited to exhibit as part of ‘Lower Austria Cultural Awards 2025’ at NÖDOK, Sankt Pölten. This group exhibition featured work by Christiane Peschek, Jochen Höller, Christian Murzek, Banafsheh Rahmani and Manfred Wakolbinger.

A new series of drawings titled Room to Become was created for the exhibition.

Exhibition Statement:

‘My series of 5 drawings, entitled Room to Become, emerged from a collaboration with 3 actors. Together we worked with the question of women’s potentiality, their ability to endure, acknowledgement of their innate capabilities and the need to move beyond past preconceptions. Our ideas and imaginings embodied by performance became the source for this series of work.

The writer Virginia Woolf used fire and heat as a metaphor for the energy necessary for radical transformation. Her influence led me to add warmth to the colours found in the women’s feet, offering heat as a transformational force that allows the figures to move and act. In extension to this, I allude to the idea of the ruby slippers worn by Dorothy in the story of The Wizard of Oz. The slippers symbolise latent potential and capability, suggesting that we already possess the power to make change even if we don’t yet realise it.
The drawings explore the embodiment of emotions and use the body to describe the impact of challenges faced by women pressing against the restrictions of a patriarchal society. Now in my early 50s, I pour the breadth of my own experience into the youthful bodies of my subjects. My understanding of the challenges that may await them informs the content of each piece and the purposefully unfinished aesthetic offers them the potential to develop and evolve further. They experience the necessity of enduring discomfort, uncertainty and fear, the lure of the void, collapse, love, loss and hope, all unashamedly and without apology.

Womanhood is viewed here through the female lens, asking for no validation or judgement of its natural state, simply the unrestricted room to become.’

With thanks to the three actors from ATU Sligo who collaborated to create source material for Room to Become – Ruth Maty Fundu, Emilia Mononen and Liana Mosneanu, Declan Drohan their tutor who facilitated the connection and David Smith, the project photographer. Emma Stroude would also like to thank Tamsin Cavaliero and Ejiro Ogbevoen for their mentorship during the making of this body of work.

Lure

Charcoal and Pastel on Paper (Fabriano 200), 150cm x 100cm, 2025