Emiliana Henriquez

Sydney Suh talks to artist Emiliana Henriquez,  about cultivating a sense of open-mindedness that persisted throughout her formative years and adulthood eventually making its way into her artistic practice. 

Upon further introspection of the Romantic-era notion of the sublime (thanks to a comprehensive nineteenth-century art history course I found myself in this past semester), I continue to find that I’m often drawn to artists that evoke dream-like scenarios through their work, posing the idea of the monumental by capturing scenes that appear tangible, appearing more adjacent to reality than authentically lifelike. Artist Emiliana Henriquez’s work initially spoke to me as such, combining the medium of oil painting with dream symbolism to create graceful representations of memories that evoke subconscious states. Our conversation took a turn towards the iconography of the sphinx, an image that inspired one of the artist’s larger scale drawings, seeing as she had recently taken a trip to Egypt. While contemplating her approach to the representation of such a widely recognizable image, Henriquez begged the question of how to translate the sensation of omnipotent grandeur into her work, maintaining the awe-inspiring nature of the sphinx’s impact, an inclination that struck me as inherently sublime.

Henriquez was born in El Salvador, immigrating to the U. S. soon after she was born. For the first decade of her life, she resided in East Los Angeles with her family, later relocating to the Westside. She notes that these disparate environments shaped her perspective on race and identity, exhibiting the cultural differences and incessant segregation across LA. From an early age, Henriquez’s father fostered her curiosity in the arts, taking her to museums and encouraging her to pursue an interest in drawing and painting. Throughout her childhood, Henriquez’s family members individually embarked on various religious endeavors, practicing disciplines such as Yoruba, Hinduism, and Sacred Geometry. This instilled an appreciation of other cultures within her, cultivating a sense of open-mindedness that persisted throughout her formative years and adulthood, eventually making its way into her artistic practice.

Henriquez’s first professional experiences in the field of fine arts involved a painting assistant job for artist Aaron Gilbert; this would later grow into a mentorship, Henriquez aiding in the creation of his pieces while he offered her constructive feedback and artistic guidance. Although she received no formal academic training in oil painting, Henriquez trained under numerous mentors, those of which helped her to develop her practice and strive for a serious career in the arts. In September of 2024, Henriquez attended her second residency in Miami through Fountainhead Arts. She noted that this provided a pivotal set of experiences for her career, stating that she had the opportunity to wholeheartedly engage in her practice without the constraints of typical day-to-day responsibilities. “The style of the residency meant I was able to isolate myself and other artists from the rest of the world, pushing me out of my comfort zone. Here, I had more moments to myself to write and meditate, to let ideas flow without the everyday aspects of life getting in the way,” Henriquez states. In addition, filmmaking and cinema has played an active role throughout the artist’s career, contributing to a personal importance regarding the use of color and composition. Henriqez believes that these aspects are essential for the relaying of narrative in her work, stating, “I try to compose my paintings from a cinematic standpoint, as if I’m constructing a shot in a movie…” she continues, “You can create a mood and a story, directing the viewer through your use of color.”

A key component of Henriquez’s practice stems from constant sketching, specifically from imagination. It is often more productive for her to sketch without references, allowing her ideas in her subconscious to come to fruition. When asked how this contributes to her process as a whole, Henriquez responds, “Sometimes, there’s an idea that comes to you; you can either go with that initial idea and that’s fine, but I’ll continually sketch my idea again and again until it’s refined and feels absolutely right. You’re sketching the concept of the idea, and sometimes to get to its core, it takes some digging.” Much of the content within her paintings is derived from dream symbolism, a topic which Henriquez finds particularly alluring. It is the prominence of a symbol that can be found in the dreams of those belonging to many different cultures, and how it can be interpreted in a variety of ways, that attracts her. In other words, the same symbol can be found across the dreams of many individuals, yet its significance and meaning can be different as a result of overarching cultural conceptions. In this way, specific symbols can unite a grander audience, bridging gaps between culture and identity. More broadly, however, Henriquez’s pieces are often centered around the physical representation of a memory, resulting in a diary-like practice that preserves profound moments in time. She depicts her lived experiences, encapsulating her own subjective.

perspective of what it means to be a Latina artist in the modern day. She notes, “I started trying to paint memories and ideas directly from my imagination, probably beginning around 2020. I wanted to represent aspects of my subconscious, centered around capturing my own memories, making them tangible.”

Many of the stylistic attributes that characterize the artist’s practice are rooted in the conservative nature of oil painting, that of which requires ample discipline and patience. However, Henriquez is drawn to oil as her primary mode of practice because she feels there are no distinct rules that govern the medium, allowing her work to exist anywhere on the spectrum of traditional to experimental. After becoming accustomed to the use of oil paint following multiple years of initial dedication, her innate artistic sensibility began to show more eminently across the portfolio she was in the process of building. Now, many of the traits that distinguish her practice are discerned by the intense layering of values, amounting to soft edges in the forms she creates. This results from Henriquez’s desire to not only situate the subjects she paints in an overall piece, but to bleed them into their environment. “The merging of humans and their environment has always spoken to me; I think it speaks to how people are shaped because of their surroundings,” she notes. Although her apparent use of monochromaticity is not intentional, existing rather as a product of Henriquez’s aesthetic instincts, it adds a further level of intimacy and comforting relatability to her work.

Currently, Henriquez is in the process of painting a series that explores Latin culture through the viewpoint of other societies, an idea that arose during her recent travels. Through creating this body of work, Henriquez is investigating the idea of finding intrinsic similarities between cultures, reflecting on how she is able to see aspects of herself within a variety of communities. The series aims to understand one’s identity amongst other people and cultures, and how that plays an integral role in the way one views themselves as an individual, as well as their role in the world.

Emiliana will be holding her next exhibition on the 8th  January 2025 at Half Gallery Annex, in New York.

Interview: Sydney Suh