Emily Peacock

"Outdoor Recreation 15," 2024, archival inkjet print, 20 x 30 inches, ed. 1/5 + 2 APs
"For more than 15 years, Emily Peacock has walked a path well worn by loud Texas women. Famous drawling folks like Molly Ivins, Ann Richards, or Brené Brown have taken the access afforded them to speak on difficult issues regarding family, gender, mental health, and class disparities. As an artist, Peacock uses her work to point out related tough incongruities–thresholds where reality and the absurd meet."

–Natalie Zelt
B. 1984, PORT ARTHUR, TX

LIVES AND WORKS IN HOUSTON, TX

DOWNLOAD ARTIST CV
Emily Peacock, Girl in a coat lying on her bed, N.Y.C., 2012

Emily Peacock collaborates with her family to create work that examines and celebrates this bond. Familial history and relationships, domesticity, the Texas landscape, and personal loss and tragedy form the foundation of her work. Peacock is also a stand-up comedian who employs humor and self-deprecation as coping mechanisms for tragedy explored across various media, from photography, film, and sculpture to installation. She emphasizes the tension between emotional vulnerability and extroversion through the consistent presence of her body in her photographs, performances, and videos.

During the isolation phase of the pandemic, Peacock was admitted to a psychiatric hospital. When the pandemic gates opened, she "ran out into the world, sometimes tripping over [her] feet." Presently, her work focuses on the profound impact of the pandemic on human connection and technology's role in this division. Recent photographs integrate technology and nature in surreal nighttime scenes, offering an uncanny perspective on our digitally dominated world. All humans experience loss and pain, and from this commonality, Peacock enjoys connecting with people through her art.

In her work, vernacular aspects of life, nature, domestic surroundings, collections, and middle-class minutiae are equally important. Grounded in memoir and regional familiarity, Peacock believes "an ordinary object or place can hold a lot of meaning for one person, but not the next... How does one take an ordinary object or place and give it meaning? I like thinking about this phenomenon, which has become a guiding principle of my creative output."

Peacock is a Houston-based artist; she received her MFA in Photography/Digital Media from the University of Houston and is a Professor of Art at Sam Houston State University. Peacock was a 2013-2014 Lawndale Artist Studio Program participant. In 2016, she received the Houston Arts Alliance Individual Artist Grant; in 2019, the New Faculty Research Grant and has had solo exhibitions at Lawndale Art Center, Houston and the Art Museum of Southeast Texas, Beaumont. She has exhibited her work throughout the United States, in Vienna, Austria, and the United Kingdom. Peacock’s work is in the permanent collections of the Art Museum of Southeast Texas and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.
Photography
- Emily Peacock, Bayou Behemoth 3, 2021
- Emily Peacock, Bayou Behemoth 5, 2021
"A Matter of Kinship," 2014
Works on paper
- Emily Peacock, Head Cheese 1, 2022
- Emily Peacock, Head Cheese 2, 2022
Emily Peacock: die laughing

Lawndale Art & Performance Center, Houston, TX, 2021

"For more than 15 years, Emily Peacock has walked a path well worn by loud Texas women. Famous drawling folks like Molly Ivins, Ann Richards, or Brené Brown have taken the access afforded them to speak on difficult issues regarding family, gender, mental health, and class disparities. As an artist, Peacock uses her work to point out related tough incongruities–thresholds where reality and the absurd meet. Peacock's artwork–which has grown across media to include photography, film, painting, performance, sculpture, and installation–elicits a kind of formative discomfort from many of her viewers that is akin to the atmosphere in a crowded room moments after that loud lady in the back asked a question–that question that is a bit too much about the taboo realities of living in this world–but is what some of us are conditioned to avoid thinking about ourselves. Peacock's artwork is a formal experiment in naming difficult and dissonant experiences using playful aesthetics rooted in the contemporary culture and the histories of art. "die laughing" showcases her use of humor and juxtaposition as mechanisms for critique as well as a means of recognizing often invisible but pervasive discrepancies in everyday life."

–Excerpt from an essay by Natalie Zelt, Ph.D., Terra Foundation for American Art Fellow in American Photography at Rijksmuseum for die laughing, work by emily peacock
Lawndale Art Center
Exhibitions
- EMILY PEACOCK
  BRUISER 26 Jul - 24 Aug 2024
  
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Press
- Top Five: August 8, 2024
  
  Emily Peacock: Bruiser (#1)
  GLASSTIRE, August 8, 2024
- Inside the uncanny attraction of Houston’s newest art duo
  
  Iva Kinnaird and Emily Peacock had fun creating an exhibit that eschews Americana.
  Joseph Staley, Houston Chronicle, April 7, 2024