Emily Hobgood Thomas " Wake County Sewage"

Artist Statement

I make work about suburban locations in my home of North Carolina. I examine place and placelessness through various iterations of digitally manipulated photographs, investigating the lack of place through repetitions in suburbia that repeat themselves to the point where they are lost in location. In his book, Simulacra and Simulation, Jean Baudrillard explains “We live in a world where there is more and more information, and less and less meaning.” As we continue to create digital information, we lose a sense of reality. The digital image becomes more “real” to us than reality itself. I create a simulation of reality that becomes the reality by revealing digital damage that is visible within the confines of the image. In using computer algorithms to aid my manipulation, additions to the image are allowed subtlety, thus reviving the landscape and revealing a possibility for the place that is ahead of its time.

Artist Bio

Emily Hobgood Thomas is an artist that works in Cary, North Carolina. She makes photographs with varying degrees of manipulation that investigate the placelessness of suburban North Carolina through the lens of the simulacra. Thomas graduated from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro in 2018 with a Bachelors of Fine Arts in Studio Art with a Concentration in Painting. In 2020, Thomas earned her Masters of Fine Arts in Studio Arts from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She currently teaches Pre K through 8th Grade Art at a local private institution.

Wake County Sewage, Digital Photocollage, 8x10 inches, 2021, $100