emily katherine//
we knew this would happen

instagram: @emilykatherineart
email: emilykatherineart@outlook.com

emily katherine (she/her) b.1998; mixed media artist and practicing street/community health nurse in toronto.

when she is not drawing silly doodles and portraits of long-necked people (often wearing turtleneck sweaters), her art explores themes of madness, grief, political happenings, and life as she knows it.

emily’s work has appeared in burning magazine (2022) and numerous posters for community advocacy groups, including toronto’s street nurse network, and harm reduction advocacy collective. emily has facilitated art workshops for mad, disabled and queer individuals. her work was most recently shown during her 2024 solo exhibition 'so much for growing out of this' at she said gallery.

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during the months of night/shift, ontario’s provincial government shuttered many supervised consumption sites (scss) across the province, continuing their ongoing fight against evidence-based healthcare practices, harm reduction principles, and compassionate governance.

beyond overdose response, scss are the true definition of meeting people where they are at — these sites provide nursing care, a listening ear, referrals to social services and a place for people who use drugs (pwud) to be seen and treated as human. pwud, healthcare workers, and allies protested scs closures, knowing the ramifications of cutting life saving services would be a death sentence to many whom we care about. since the closures of these sites, there have been too many people found too late after using the toxic and unpredictable street supply of drugs in toronto, left for dead in our parks and our sidewalks - we knew this would happen.

in tandem with political happenings, my body of work explores grief, love and holding the weight of outcomes resulting from choices out of my control. creating this collection was cathartic. each piece serves as a time stamp of a particular event or feeling, allowing me to process them into physical form. by sketching out phrases boldly in coloured pencils and meticulously filling in the white spaces, i found solace between each layer of carbon black acrylic ink.