Emilia DeRego

2024 Senior Exhibition Artists

Emilia DeRego

Concentration: Art + Design: Illustration

About Emilia DeRego

Emilia DeRego is an illustrator, mixed-media artist, and nature enthusiast from Tiverton, Rhode Island. They are passionate about working with plants and minerals to create natural paints. Emilia values this connection between themself, the medium, and the environment. Artmaking for them is a process that allows space for self-reflection, growth, and healing. In this sense, the process is as significant as the final piece. Emilia hopes to someday form an entirely regenerative practice in the arts, allowing them to give back to the earth through the act of creation.

Statement

I created a series of visual poems that explore themes of creation, preservation, and destruction in nature and the body. These pieces are living works that are unfinished and bound to fade due to the nature of their medium. Creating them was a learning process for me, as I explored techniques of making my own paints using food waste and foraged materials. I intended for these pieces to portray a deep connection to the earth in conception and subject matter. I began working on this series in January 2024, during a period of declining mental and physical health. Art became a way for me to cope with the changes occurring within my mind and body. I imagined these changes as a natural process, a state of decay that precedes new growth. This body of work documented my dwindling state of self before matters became unmanageable.

Choosing to pursue residential treatment was difficult, as it meant leaving behind this project and my final year of school without closure. I was stabilized in the hospital before checking myself into eating disorder treatment and putting my paint-making on pause. I had to let go of many of the artistic practices I loved to care for a body I felt little connection to. I was introduced to the practice of altered-booking, creating a mixed-media visual diary from old books and magazine scraps. It became a therapeutic practice to express the complexities of my emotions and a way to cope with a slower, sedentary world. This journal primarily focuses on adjustment and growth, and a healing process that is both painful and confusing. Eating disorder recovery is uncomfortable healing that is physically and emotionally exhausting. This book helped me to wrap my head around the constant internal conflict, radically embracing growth and stumbling through treatment. I am grateful for the support of my friends, family, professors, and the patients and staff of Klarman, all of whom have made it possible to show my work today.