ABOUT
Emily Manalo Ruiz is an artist living in Charleston, SC. She received her BFA in Painting & Art History from the University of South Carolina and worked in art & fashion for a number of years thereafter. With her interest in apparel, Ruiz then received her Fashion Studies certificate from Moore College of Art & Design.
Enamored by the tactility of working with fabric but turned off by the amount of waste in the fashion industry, she used the skills acquired to enable her foray into textile art. Attracted to the idea of art as artifact or relic, she began using salvaged materials to create graphic, conceptual and text-based pieces in the form of flags. These pieces act as symbols of allegiance & identity while vehicles for personal statements. Ruiz aims to make poignant, relatable, often cathartic work that is the result of processing the human experience.