Artist Talk with emet ezell

Everything is in the Letters

Thursday, March 18, 2027
Reception at 5:30 pm
Talk begins at 6:00 pm

As a poet and typographer, emet ezell works with the materiality of language. For ezell, words and letters are not empty husks of signification; rather, they are charged with historical residue and mystical energy. In this lecture, ezell will elaborate on their artistic research in Sabile, Latvia, and Lublin, Poland—both sites of ethnic cleansing and Jewish dispossession. What happens to language in the wake of annihilation? How does the rubble of the past erupt in our shared present? Guided by these questions, ezell will discuss their use of rescued typefaces, handmade paper, and letterpress print.

emet ezell (b. 1995) is a visual artist and writer based in Berlin, Germany. Trained in the studio of Polish typographer Robert Sawa, ezell works with the letter as the visual and tactile unit of composition. ezell is winner of the 2021 Gloria E. Anzaldúa Poetry Prize and a 2024 Literature Stipend from the Berlin Senate. Their writing has been published in The American Poetry Review, The Los Angeles Review of Books, The Keyon Review, and Hand Papermaking Magazine, among others. In the Spring of 2027, they will be a fellow at the Kala Art Institute.