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Emile Kees: Souvenirs – Rise Art x Montcalm Collection
Souvenirs
Emile Kees
15 May 2026 – 30 June 2026
In collaboration with Montcalm Collection, Rise Art presents Souvenirs, an exhibition of photographs by Emile Kees on how memory shapes and unsettles our experience of place.
Souvenirs is a series of photographic reconstructions of hotel rooms, restaged in domestic or familiar settings. Within this slippage between experience and recollection, the works unfold as a conceptual documentation of remembered details - textures, colours, objects - translated into new images, foregrounding the fluid and unreliable nature of memory.
The artist has provided textual fragments for several works, each citation offering a point of entry into the memory that underpins them.
Online exhibition with select works on show at Montcalm Royal London House, London. Until June 2026.
Rise Art shines a light on today's most dynamic and culturally significant artists, collaborating directly with a curated roster of emerging, mid-career, and established creatives worldwide.
Montcalm Collection is a distinguished group of luxury, boutique, and urban hotels located across the City of London, Mayfair, Marble Arch, Hyde Park, and Paddington. Renowned for its commitment to arts, culture, and wellness, the Collection offers a refined hospitality experience at the heart of the capital.
MONTCALM ROYAL LONDON HOUSE
22-25 Finsbury Square, London,
EC2A 1DX, UK.
15 May, 2026 – 30 June, 2026
Opening reception 15 Jan 6.30 - 8.30pm
EXHIBITING ARTIST
PRESS RELEASE
featured works
Other people’s rooms (Bydgoszcz, Poland, 2015)
"I spend lots of time talking to friends in their respective rooms late into the night, until the rooms all begin to look the same and I cannot recall anything about my own - in fact, nothing remains, only doors. When I open the door in my head there is just a wall, nothing more. "
Patterned tablecloth (Baja, California, Mexico, 2018)
"We eat breakfast on the roof and find a handful of tables covered with pink and yellow tablecloths - the repeating pattern is either of fruits or flowers - each furnished with 4 chairs and a parasol. After arriving in distress late at night, the building feels entirely different in the morning."
Pool in a tropical storm (Pafos, Cyprus, 2017)
"My dad and I are sat on this patio, on plastic deck chairs with plastic side tables, drinking beers in glass bottles. We face towards the pool, the parameters of which stretch and shrink in my recollection. The surface of the water ripples and warps. I wish we could stay forever, but the rain begins."
Lobby ghosts (Seattle, WA, USA, 2023)
"Standing on the other side of the room is a potted plant covered with a thin plastic dust sheet. There is no evidence of recent painting or building works, which prompts me to think that the plant has died, and it is too big for anyone to know what to do with. Before I can question its fate any further, the bus (which looks more like a mini van) pulls up in front of the hotel, and we leave the cover-up forever."
Glass wallpaper (Northern England, 2016)
"I only remember this space from a doorway - I didn’t stay here. My mum remembers the room too - in great detail, but in her room there is no wallpaper. And so now it starts to fall away in my memory, leaving a blank white in its place."
Recalling the colours of flowers (Montana, USA, 2019)
"I know I bought the flowers from a supermarket, but struggle to imagine them in the hotel with us, perhaps because it feels unnatural to have fresh cut flowers in a vase in a hotel room. I cannot recall exactly what kind they were, but I have a strong sense that they were lilac."
About Emile Kees
Emile Kees explores the intersection between natural and manufactured spaces, often meditating on ideas of home, the seemingly unremarkable coincidences of everyday life, and queer intimacy. He has exhibited in New York, Scotland, England and Switzerland, and taught at cultural institutions such as the University of Cambridge and Yale. Emile is based in Edinburgh, Scotland.
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