Emily Ryalls is a Wakefield-based artist working with photography, performance and sculpture to create spaces for engagement and connection. Central to Ryalls’ practice is an exploration of women’s embodied knowledge. She is fascinated by the ways in which we acquire knowledge, and who is afforded the space to share such knowledge.

During a two-week residency at YSP and The Art House in April, Ryalls will develop a project focusing on performance, land art, as well as archives and knowledge systems. She will work with local women to explore body mapping practices inspired by the natural world in collaboration with analogue photographic techniques. Within her work, the camera becomes a point of connection, and the resulting imagery acts as a record of the exchanges between women.

Since 2023, Ryalls has been developing this body of feminist research during her MA at the University of York’s Centre for Women’s Studies. Her research brings together diverse groups of women, inviting them to reimagine their body as an archive – storing memories like a sponge. The project investigates how we can best care, share, and preserve this bodily knowledge.

Ryalls will continue to develop the project following the residency, which will culminate in a collaborative performance work at YSP in summer 2025. The Art House will present the artist’s first solo exhibition in autumn 2025.