In Emilie Louise Gossiaux’s world the boundary between human and nonhuman begins to dissolve. Their work, even when it emerges from grief, is tender, strange, and often joyful.
At the center of their recent practice is London, their guide dog, companion, and collaborator, whose death led Gossiaux to reflect on the profound life they built together. Their relationship moved beyond familiar ideas of ownership or dependence, and it was shaped instead by trust, mutual care, and a deep understanding of one another.
After losing their sight in their early twenties, Gossiaux developed a practice rooted in drawing, sculpture and installation. Even in stiff institutional settings, their sculptures are meant to be touched, creating an intimacy between the artist, the work, and the audience that looking alone cannot offer. Gossiaux shows how touch becomes both a way of making and a way of knowing.
In this conversation, Gossiaux speaks about mourning London, the intelligence of interdependence, and the spiritual, celebratory worlds she creates beyond a human-centered imagination.
Emilie Louise Gossiaux (b. 1989 New Orleans, LA) is a multidisciplinary artist based in New York City. Gossiaux earned a BFA from the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art in 2014, and an MFA from Yale School of Art in 2019.
Adriana Blidaru: My first question is about London, your longtime collaborator and the muse in many of your works. You developed such a special relationship with her over the years. How do you think about her presence in your work now? And how does it feel to carry her legacy forward after her passing, as you enter this new chapter?
Emilie Louise Gossiaux: Yeah, thank you for asking that, because it’s something I’ve been thinking about a lot over the past few months now. London passed away half a year ago, and saying goodbye to her was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do in my life.
I owe a lot to her. The fact that she and I were able to collaborate together for so long, and to have a connection like that, really shaped who I am, how I think of myself, and how I view the world. It’s really powerful.
We were together for 12 years, which is the longest relationship I’ve ever had with a person or an animal. Of course, I could only imagine what losing someone so close would be like, but you can’t really prepare yourself for the reality of them not being in your life anymore.
So I think I will continue to cherish these parts of myself that London created in me, and continue to honor her life and legacy in my work.
And I know that I want to train with a new guide dog, because that’s what London was for me. First and foremost, she was my first guide dog. I think that kind of relationship is really specific: entrusting an animal with your life, and having that animal trust you in return. It was such a huge responsibility for both of us. I know that I want to work with a new guide dog, and I know that our relationship will be different. But I hope it will be as deep and as meaningful as the one I had with London.
AB: You can feel this tenderness in your work, and this intimacy that you’re depicting. I was thinking about what that means in the larger context of interspecies companionship, and especially in relation to trust. You have to develop this very specific kind of trust with a guide dog. How does that trust become an artistic medium?
EG: I’ve also been reflecting a lot on this question of intimacy and where it started. London was the first animal or person that I had full responsibility for. And I was only in my early 20s. I was very young when I got her, so to change the focus from myself to this other creature was really life-changing for me.
Over time, I started to realize that she taught me a lot about trust, empathy, and what true intimacy means, and how both of those things are essential and necessary in any relationship. But with London, it was also about getting to know somebody who can’t talk, somebody I can’t see, somebody I don’t have visual eye contact with. So a lot of it had to do with touch and hearing, and getting to know her through touch and through different ways of communicating nonverbally.
I think a lot of that intimacy started with food and feeding. I realized that, in any relationship I have, food is a really strong way to build intimacy with someone. And it was the same with London. I liked to share food with her, and we were able to bond that way.
There’s also something really beautiful about being able to feed someone from hand to mouth. Touching her lips and feeling her tongue on my fingertips when she was accepting a treat from me was not just rewarding for her, but also a very rewarding experience for me. It’s something I did a lot in the last month of taking care of her, feeding her by hand, because she couldn’t stand up and eat in front of her food bowl anymore. She had to eat lying down.
So a lot of that was me feeding her chicken and kibble, and getting all that slobber and drool on my hands. Feeling that messiness was a real bonding experience of care, like repaying her for all the devotion and care she gave to me in my life.
A lot of my drawings and sculptures of London, I think of them as portraits. Something I also enjoy reading about with other artists who do portraiture is the way they develop trust or understanding with their sitter. In order to capture someone on paper or in clay, you have to really capture that essence. You need to trust them, they have to trust you, and there has to be some kind of psychic understanding between the sitter and the artist.
That’s something I found with London. I knew her so well that I could capture her character, her spirit, and translate that in clay or in my drawings. And also, for her to trust that I could create a safe environment for her to live in: I think building that trust became really sacred to me in our relationship.
AB: You’ve described drawing almost as a way of recording dreams or memories before they become sculptures. I’m curious how you see the relationship between drawing and sculpture in your practice, and how you think about touch within your own process. But you also allow other people to experience your works through touch, and I was curious if you could talk a bit more about that.
EG: I guess one of the reasons why I loved drawing London so much was because I loved touching and petting her all the time. I was able to translate that visual imagery of London’s body and her movements, but also feel her personality, or read her personality, through touching her.
And drawing that on paper, and then in clay: I like my sculptures to feel like they’re in movement, like there’s life in them. So I tend to make my drawings over and over and over again, but each one is slightly different, like there’s a stutter or a shiver in compositions between them, like a comic strip. I have several versions of the same drawing as a way to memorize them, and to keep exploring that memory more deeply.
I like to then translate my drawings into sculpture, to create something physically from a drawing. Sometimes I will make sculptures of something that appears in my drawing, kind of like a set piece in a film or video, so that the thing is physically there, almost like an installation.
I want my audience to be able to touch my work. I feel like accessibility becomes another way to engage with my audience intimately and in a fun, curious way, because that’s how I experience the world: so much through touch. And touch is one of those senses that you’re taught not to use from the first day of going to school: you have to keep your hands to yourself.
So I want to create that curious and intimate experience for my audience. And I feel like, in a way, they’re able to enter into that. It becomes a kind of triangular relationship between me, my audience, and my artwork.
.jpg)
AB: You also worked in the education department of a museum, so you’re very much part of this world where people are usually not allowed to touch the artwork. You also worked at the Met, right?
EG: Yes, I was a contractual museum educator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and I worked mainly in the access department. I was able to meet with curators and conservators who worked in different departments of the Met’s collection, like decorative arts or European modern art.
They liked to work with me, and if I had a question about a specific painting or sculpture - for example, if there was something in a still life painting or a sculpture that I needed to understand for a class, and they also had that kind of object in the collection, like a goblet, or a fork, a knife, or a plate, something I’d never seen before - they would bring it out for me and I could explore it.
I learn so much about the artist’s intention just through touching the object. The material the artists chose to work with, the tools they might have used, their hands present in the work - all this, tells you so much about the work. I feel like you wouldn’t be able to understand those things in the same way if you weren’t able to touch them.
AB: Returning a bit to this idea of the representation of animals in your work: you mentioned this earlier, and I picked up on it because I thought it was such an interesting resemblance - the way some of your sculptures feel connected to Egyptian sculpture, especially these hybrids between humans and animals, or human bodies with animal heads, which you’ve also explored quite a lot. I’m wondering what you think about that connection?
EG: Yeah, I started making drawings and sculptures of hybrid animal-humans, like women with dog heads or women with alligator heads. And I also like to think about how ancient Egyptians and other civilizations looked at animals and turned them into gods or goddesses: beings that had this power over humans, or some kind of spiritual power. I find that so beautiful.
I feel very spiritually connected to animals, especially with London. And I think about what we were talking about earlier, this idea of us becoming a whole organism: my body merging with London’s body to become one super-being.
Especially with my disability, she gave me so much confidence in myself. To me, that was a very, very supportive role that she played in my life. I think there’s a lot of agency that she granted me through this collaborative relationship.
And it’s also not just what she gave to me. She herself was such a free being. I saw her coming into my life as an individual. I didn’t just see her as an animal who was subordinate to me because I am a human. London was such an individual, an independent person in her own right, that I could only see her as a co-partner, as an equal.
I think that’s what is so powerful and incredibly inspiring about these more ancient depictions of animals, where humans and animals are sharing one body.
AB: You know, we have all these myths and rituals surrounding animals that we’ve kind of lost touch with. I wanted to ask you about the large installation you made with a maypole, where you turn your cane into something celebratory, surrounded by all these versions of London. It’s only her, right? But multiplied.
EG: Oh yeah, there are three Londons, and they’re all dancing and holding on to these dog leashes that are attached to the top of this maypole, which is also a white cane.
When I was thinking about that piece, I was thinking mostly about the symbolism of the white cane, and what that means to people as a marker for blindness and difference. Oftentimes, it’s a marker of shame - something so visible that makes you different. The way you move through the world is different, or the way you experience the world is through touch or through hearing and not through sight.
We’re such a visual-centric species, so I think that when I turned my white cane into a monument, into this monumental size, I wanted it to become the center of the installation: to celebrate this part of myself that I am proud of, and also to celebrate my interdependent relationship with London.
But also, as I was saying before, I saw her as a true individual. In the work, she is standing upright, at human scale, with human features and eyes and paws that look like hands, and she’s holding onto her own dog leashes. I wanted to portray her being in control, or having her own agency, which is what the white cane gives to me. It’s a sign of agency and autonomy and freedom of movement.
The other thing about the ritual of the maypole dance is that it celebrates the interdependent balance between humans and nature, this cycle of rebirth and renewal. It was an image and a ritual that I was really drawn to.
I’m reading a book right now for the second time called The Chalice and the Blade, which looks back at Neolithic and Paleolithic art and tries to understand what those civilizations were like: what their power structures were, what it was like to live then, to be an artist, and what they believed in.
So there was this belief in a goddess being at the center, holding the power of both bringing in life and taking it back into the womb, and this idea of rebirth and renewal; that power feels connected to the maiden’s dance circling around a maypole, which is also about welcoming the life of spring after a long, dead winter. I feel like this idea of the spiritual cycle between life and death is something I was really drawn to.
AB: Beautifully said. You’re in New York, which is such an intense city in and of itself; there’s just so much happening here. You talk about dreams and memory in your work, and there are all these other environments that seem to infiltrate it. I’m wondering how you experience the city versus nature. How do those two environments shape your work, or your imagination?
EG: I love living in New York City, but I also really wish that I could live in a rural environment. It’s my dream to have a flock of sheep that I can herd. I wish I could have that relationship with nature, but I love the city just as much.
I’ve been doing some drawings of cars and trucks being overturned by nature — cars and trucks on their sides, or with their wheels up in the air — as this fantasy of wildness taking over the Anthropocene. In a way, it’s kind of scary, but it’s also a beautiful vision: wildness and nature taking over cities, overthrowing the human-centered world.
It’s something that I know I’ve experienced through devastating hurricanes, through Katrina, because - as you know - I’m from the South. So you experience that loss of home, and being torn away from family. These are just these wild imaginations and fantasies I have.
AB: And what is next for you? You were just in the Whitney Biennial with a beautiful installation of drawings and sculptures. What are you interested in exploring next?
EG: I’m still going through this grieving period with London, and even though she’s not here, I’m still finding ways to stay connected with her spiritually. There are things that I wish I had done with her. I miss touching her, and I try to remember exactly what her paws felt like, or what her head or her nose felt like.
After London passed away, a lot of people sent me flowers for her, and I had five different vases of flowers on my studio table. So I started to draw those flowers and touch them. I’ve been thinking about other things and objects I can touch that will help me stay grounded and physically connected with London.
I have an installation called “Kong Play” in the Whitney Biennial. I made London’s favorite chew toy over and over again 100 times. I was imagining her living in the afterlife, and wanted to create a heaven for her where she can lick and chew on Kongs stuffed with peanut butter, so it was like I created this pleasure palace shrine to her. For some people death means the end, but for me it is like a new beginning. I also have 11 drawings on display with the installation. I made these a month before we put London down. In the majority of these drawings, London is dormant, lying down, because that’s how she was towards the end of her life. In some of the drawings she is lying down at the foot of our bed, or she is lying in bed with me and my partner, or we are lying on the ground together in a forest clearing, or outside under the moon, returning to Mother Nature.
.jpg)
