Emma Alice Coppola
For some reason, I can never find my way around Rosebank. No matter how many times I go there, I always get lost.
That’s why I make sure I arrive an hour early for any appointment in the area — just enough time to get hopelessly disoriented, wander around in frustration and eventually stumble upon my destination.
On this particular day, I am heading to Keyes Art Mile to see Emma Alice Coppola’s latest exhibition, Prickling, Piercing and the Potential for Pain.
Coppola is a recent graduate from the University of Johannesburg with an honours degree in fine art.
She tells Mail & Guardian she hasn’t streamlined her mediums yet, but her practice is mostly rooted in intaglio printmaking, particularly zinc etching, as well as sculpture and film.
I have to admit, I approach this exhibition with a fair bit of scepticism. Lately, I’ve found the themes dominating many gallery spaces have started to blend into one another: repetition, nostalgia, trauma.
It’s not that these topics aren’t important, but as a writer, it gets exhausting to discuss the same things in different variations over and over again.
I wonder if Coppola’s work will bring something new to the table.
After my usual Rosebank ordeal, I finally make it to the Keyes Art Mile. The sun is relentless and my choice of slathering Vaseline on my face this morning is beginning to feel like a grave mistake.
Works from the exhibition Prickling, Piercing and the Potential for Pain, by Emma Alice Coppola
I rush up the stairs, seeking refuge from the heat before I melt entirely.
Inside, my eyes immediately land on a video installation playing on a loop to my right.
The screen shows a hand moving up and down, caressing a pair of sheer stockings embedded with hundreds of needles.
There is something strangely hypnotic about it — the gliding motion, the sharp pricks, the juxtaposition of softness and sharpness.
The exhibition title suddenly makes perfect sense. No further explanation needed.
Coppola appears and greets me. “You must be Lesego?” she says. “You must be Emma?” I reply. “Please take me through the exhibition.”
She doesn’t hesitate.
“The main concept is making the viewer feel something and I find that the easiest way to do that is through discomfort,” she explains.
We start with the video installation which first caught my eye — a triptych of films that revolve around bodily discomfort.
“The first video is of over 700 pin needles stuck to a pair of sheer stockings,” Coppola explains.
“The overlay play on that is double discomfort.”
The second video, titled The Pieces We Shed, features a pair of stockings threaded with nail clippings — her own, which were collected over the course of a year.
The act of gathering these discarded fragments of the body and turning them into material for art speaks to the subject — that which was once a part of us but now feels alien, even repulsive.
“This work looks at the grand nature of the word ‘abject’ — how something so ordinary, something that is literally from us, suddenly becomes uncomfortable,” she says.
The third video is even more visceral — Coppola sticks needles directly into her bare hands.
No barrier, no buffer. Just flesh and sharp steel. I can’t help but wonder where the impulse to explore pain and discomfort in this way comes from.
Moving further into the exhibition, Coppola shows me her etchings and cutout ink and charcoal drawings.
Like the videos, these evoke a deep unease — but in a different way.
“These works deal with discomfort through displacement,” she says, pointing at a drawing.
“I’m interested in the dysfunctionality of tools — how they lose their intended purpose when combined in unnatural ways.
“Here, I’ve spliced together a pair of scissors and a spade. You can’t really imagine using it effectively anymore.”
The disrupted function of objects, she explains, is deeply personal.
“This work is referential to my dad,” she says. “His body doesn’t work anymore but his brain does.
“It’s about the disconnect between the body and the mind — how it feels to be trapped in a body that no longer responds.”
It’s at this moment that the exhibition starts to make sense on a much deeper level.
Coppola isn’t just playing with discomfort for the sake of spectacle. She is translating intangible, deeply personal experiences into something that can be felt by others.
One thing Prickling, Piercing and the Potential for Pain reminds me of is how abjection can feel so unrelatable that people refuse to engage with it altogether.
It’s easier to dismiss discomfort than to sit with it. Maybe that’s why I struggled to pitch this exhibition during the newsroom diary meeting — it’s not something you can just explain in a neat little paragraph.
Works from the exhibition Prickling, Piercing and the Potential for Pain, by Emma Alice Coppola
It is something that you have to experience.
Coppola seems unbothered by this. She tells me that the work is doing exactly what it is meant to do — make people think, feel — and confront themselves.
She shares a story about a group of teenagers who visited the exhibition.
“I remember seeing them arguing about the different themes in the work — talking about feminism, sexuality, even body autonomy.
“I eventually joined the conversation and the fact that they were engaging so deeply told me that the work really does matter.”
And that’s the thing about Prickling, Piercing and the Potential for Pain — it doesn’t need to be comfortable to be meaningful.
There’s something refreshing about an exhibition that doesn’t try to spoonfeed the viewer.
Coppola’s work isn’t about telling people what to think — it’s about making them feel something visceral, even if that feeling is discomfort.
As I leave Keyes Art Mile and step back into the unforgiving Rosebank heat, I realise that this is the kind of work that lingers.
It prickles at your thoughts long after you’ve left the gallery. It pierces through layers of detachment and forces you to acknowledge parts of yourself you might rather ignore. And that, I suppose, is its real power.