Emmy Mikelson

contact: ekmikelson@gmail.com




Night Vision series 2022 - present



Emmy Mikelson is an interdisciplinary artist whose work explores the strangeness embedded in familiar environments, revealing speculative worlds within our own.  Through references to microbial landscapes and dense forest ecosystems, her artwork and studies in psychology support an exploration of the unseen and unexpected in both environmental contexts and human interactions. 

She was raised in Iowa and lives in New York City, where she received her MFA from Hunter College, CUNY.  Currently completing an MA in Psychology at the CUNY School for Professional Studies, her focus is on group dynamics and errors in cognitive reasoning, such as the misrepresentation of chance and the inability to perceive randomness.  These common errors in judgement -- not unlike a deer frozen in the headlights -- underscore prevalent social phenomena like conspiracy theories and paranormal beliefs.

Mikelson’s work has been exhibited in New York and internationally, including Leipzig, Germany; Milan, Italy; Mexico City, Mexico; and Espoo, Finland. She participated in the Labverde science and art research residency at the Adolpho Ducke Rainforest Reserve in Manaus, Brazil, as well as new media arts residencies at Signal Culture (Owego, NY) and CultureHub (La MaMa Gallery, New York, NY). She has contributed text and artwork to several experimental architecture journals including Nova Organa, KTISMA, and Moinopolis. She co-authored the publication And Another Thing: Nonanthropocentrism and Art (punctum books, 2016) with Katherine Behar. Mikelson has been invited as a speaker at the Center for Transformative Media at Parsons the New School for Design, NY; Maysles Cinema, Harlem, NY; Pace University, NY; and as a guest curator for the James Gallery at the Graduate Center (CUNY). 


all images in Night Vision series, digital photographs


“The large contribution of knowledge from the past for vision raises the issue: how do we recognize the present, without confusion from the past.”

— Richard L. Gregory. Knowledge in perception and illusion (1997)

Blind Forest series 2016 - 2019


(oculus). Pen and ink over digital photograph on paper, 8.5” x 15”, 2018
(night crawler). Pen and ink over digital photograph on paper, 8.5” x 15”, 2018
(dusk). Pen and ink over digital photograph on paper, 11” x 18”, 2018
(fuzzy eyes). Pen and ink over digital photograph on paper, 11” x 18”, 2018
(lichen). Pen and ink over digital photograph on paper, 8.5” x 15”, 2018

Video (2016)




“... he was moving backwards through the emergent past, through a succession of
ever stranger landscapes, centred upon the lagoon, each of which, ... seemed to
represent one of his own spinal levels.”

— J. G. Ballard. The Drowned World (1962)

Night of the Red Sky




Neuronic Lagoon




Curse of the Red Sky




Return to Neuronic Lagoon





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