Delfina Emmanuel grew up surrounded by the traditions and perfumes of Sardinia, a land rich in marine life, with ancient customs that have survived the passage of time. Her current practice is informed by her native culture with its music and folk-costumes of luxuriant materials, adorned with precious jewels and her early education in classics, in particular the fairy tales and symbolisms found in Latin and Greek mythology. Emmanuel is particularly captivated by the gentle flowing of the living creatures found in the seabed: protruding coral structure tentacles, the huge variety of these porous sponges, the ways in which they take different shapes and the porosity and patterns of their surface.
Early research into the ornamental sculptures of the 15th-century Florentine Della Robbia family and, later, Karl Blossfeldt’s book ‘Art Forms in Nature’ and the work of goldsmith and jeweller Peter Carl Fabergé are her main influences. Her forms, although very important, have become the canvas for her ideas. Emmanuel hopes that the interpretation she has given to her artwork provokes a glorious escapism and thoughts of the ocean and its fragility.
