ABOUT ME

EMA (Enrico Muratore Aprosio) is an Italian artist and story-teller based in Geneva.

EMA’s works propose the viewers a framed mix of prehistorical, historical and contemporary ingredients informing a collective philosophical, psychiatric and political reflection around who we were, who we have become, and where we are heading to as human race, and why, mixing figurative, abstract, ironic, magic and surreal elements to depict alternatively dystopian, apocalyptic and utopian past and future worlds, using psychedelic, brilliant and fluorescent colours, in many cases portraying animals as a metaphor for humans.

In 2020, during the Covid-19 pandemic, EMA produced the twelve collages of the ‘Coronavirus series’, addressing themes such as mental disease, exploitation, authoritarianism, totalitarianism, imperialism, colonialism and anti-colonialism, racism, inequality, revolution, courage and love. In the ‘Lucid Dreaming series’ (2021-22), EMA developed abstract works influenced by the style of the artistic movements of the early twentieth century, such as orphism, cubism and futurism, to describe the intersection between sleep and insomnia, and healing.

In 2022-23, EMA exhibited these and other works in Geneva, Monaco Zug, Turin, Pisa, New York and Brussels. During the same period, EMA developed the ‘Radioactive Beasts Series’, a project motivated by the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the risk of military and nuclear escalation between Russia and NATO, taking inspiration from George Orwell’s Animal Farm.

In April 2023, EMA screened the Radioactive Beasts in New York, during one week, on a giant billboard in Times Square, with support from International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons – ICAN, 2017 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate.

In his young years, when he was a student, EMA was also already a painter, a collage artist, a story-teller, a music promoter and a radio journalist specialized in Jamaican music. After his studies, EMA spent over twenty-five years at the service of the United Nations and other organizations, living and working in different countries and continents, especially in Africa, as part of UN peace-keeping mission or other field operations. His entire life, EMA actively militated for the promotion of a culture of peace and equal rights, including in war-torn countries such as Angola, Rwanda or the DRC, by organizing peace, human rights and active citizenship  campaigns, working with media, intellectuals, musicians, dancers, theater actors and visual artists in various countries.

In Angola, between 1998 and 2007, EMA directed human rights education campaigns, organized human rights song contests and live shows, and promoted numerous human rights-related radio and theater projects.

In 2007-2009, EMA developed a collaboration with the popular Beppe Grillo’s blog to produce and disseminate contents and interviews with historical figures and intellectuals from Africa and beyond, such as the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize Wangari Maathai and others. In 2009, EMA coordinated an online campaign to commemorate the 1994 Rwandan genocide, publishing contents by the 1997 Nobel Prize in Literature, Dario Fo, and other protagonists, survivors and experts of the genocide.

Among them, Senegalese writer Boubacar Boris Diop recalled the example of Captain Mbaye Diagne, a Senegalese Army Captain and a United Nations military observer who lost his life in Kigali, Rwanda, on 31 May 1994, after rescuing, unarmed, hundreds of people. In 2009, EMA moved to Dakar, Senegal. There, along with Mbaye Diagne’s family and Senegalese Army officers who were also in Rwanda during the 1994 genocide, EMA set up the Association of Captain Mbaye Diagne for the Culture of Peace, to promote the Captain’s legacy. As the Secretary-General of the Association for ten years (2009-2019), EMA produced films to popularize the Captain and organized numerous events in Dakar, in Geneva and in New York in collaboration with the United Nations, the BBC, Oxfam, the Konrad Adenauer Foundation and the ICRC, with the participation of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Prince Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, the UN Special Adviser on the prevention of genocide Adama Dieng and General Romeo Dallaire, and supported with visual artists to produce wall paintings of the Captain in Dakar. Since 2013, EMA also published on il Fatto Quotidiano online on human rights, development and conflict, migrations and African history. In 2018, with the UN Television, EMA documented the challenges of refugees and migrants at the Italian-French border of Ventimiglia.

In 2024, in collaboration with ICAN (the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons), EMA produced the book Promemoria-Reminder (Sending Out an SOS) collecting his most significant works produced between 2020 and 2024, as well as selected writings, to remind everyone that peace is the fundamental value to be protected in these times, when a nuclear war is looming to destroy humanity and the future of our children and young generations; and that we all have to engage to demand peace and human conditions of life for everyone. EMA also produced the Promemoria-Reminder song and video with a collective of Angolan, Swiss and French artists for peace including the famous Angolan artists Paulo Flores and Nelson Ebo.