Emily Sundblad

Emily Sundblad (born 1977) is a painter, singer and art dealer. She is co-founder and co-director of Reena Spaulings Fine Art, New York.

Sundblad was born in Sweden in 1977. She received her BFA from Parsons the New School for Design in New York in 2003, before attending the Whitney Museum's Independent Study Program, which she completed in the spring of 2006.

In 2003, Sundblad co-founded the gallery Reena Spaulings Fine Art, meaning she is one of the portrayers of the fictional New York art scene "It Girl," gallerist, and then artist, Reena Spaulings, who appears to helm the gallery. Spaulings is portrayed by other artists, including co-director John Kelsey, gathered from the collective known as the Bernadette Corporation, which has been producing and releasing film, music, and literature since its creation in 1994. Reena Spaulings, as an artist, was included in the Whitney Museum's 2006 Biennial and has also exhibited at the Tate Modern. Spaulings continues to exist, as a gallery and as an artist, today.

Sundblad, as herself, has also exhibited her paintings internationally and performed at a variety of venues including the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Sundblad's performances and the characters she sings as are known to be constantly evolving, as the art critic Holland Cotter wrote about her "That's the remarkable thing about her as an artist. As with the winds of change, you never know the direction she will take. She has no signature. For her, art is a float, not an anchor."

In 2011, Sundblad had her second solo show, ¡Qué Bárbara!, both an exhibition of paintings, and inaugural and closing performances at Algus Greenspon in New York. This show also brought about Sundblad's auction debut as she sold the self-portrait she used as her exhibit announcement at Philips de Pury, which sold for $37,500 (with the auction house premium). With Sundblad's decision to directly send her painting to auction, even before the show's opening, she commented on the current art market and the time between an artist's emergence and day at auction, not to mention monetizing one's own image.

Her transformation of the gallery space, and having it act as an entertainment venue for one-time performances, also tested general expectations of art world commerce. Sundblad's performances for ¡Qué Bárbara! were acclaimed for her soulfulness and potential as a "music phenomenon."

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