Emilie O’Brien is a student in Concordia’s INDI Masters Program, where she is studying the role of our bodies in interconnection, and healing. Against late capitalism’s rampant individualism and its destructive effects of social and environmental disconnection, Emilie’s research and artwork is grounded in a growing understanding that our physical boundaries are in fact porous and not so easily defined, proposing that our great potential as humans depends on a profound recognition of, and reciprocity between an intrinsic intelligence held within our bodies, and that found in the systems of life that surround us.

Presupposing the body-in-healing as an activated site of interconnectivity, the main thrust of her Masters research-creation project, titled What The Body Knows, comprises of interviews with practitioners in various healing modalities, probing their understanding(s) of the body.  

Emilie is an artist who received her BFA from ECUAD and a professional art conservator specializing in contemporary art, trained at Sir Sanford Fleming College. She spent several years as co-proprietor of Monastiraki, a local gallery, art production, and retail space in Montreal, before leaving to become a mother in 2013. The constellation of her work is situated in somatic experience, community building, and materiality.