Pharos Charriot, 2024
Henriquez’s paintings are luminous meditations on identity and belonging—where myth, memory, and color converge to create worlds both intimate and universal.
Born in El Salvador in 1986 and raised in East Los Angeles, Emiliana Henriquez is a painter whose work is shaped by a multicultural upbringing and the resilience of her family amid the challenges of their predominantly Latin neighborhood. Art and music offered refuge from the violence that surrounded her, nurturing an early creative vision that she would eventually pursue professionally in 2021.
Henriquez’s paintings explore the emotional connections that unite people across cultural divides, often through the lens of her own experiences as a woman of color. Autobiographical elements intertwine with dream symbolism, mythology, and the unpredictability of memory, resulting in compositions that invite introspection and self-acceptance. Her distinctive use of color—radiant lime greens, deep reds, and glowing ambers—functions much like cinematic storytelling, shaping character, atmosphere, and mood.
Her practice is informed by both modern figurative painters, including Odd Nerdrum, Jordan Casteel, and Lisa Yuskavage, and classical masters such as Rembrandt, Goya, and Peter Paul Rubens. Recent projects include Warm Blue Velvet (Half Gallery, New York, 2025), inspired by her travels in Egypt, and her debut solo exhibition at Fortnight Institute, New York. She has participated in group exhibitions at the Flag Art Foundation alongside artists such as Alice Neel and Elizabeth Peyton, as well as at Charlie James Gallery, Phillips Auction House’s Nomadic Superpositionprogram, and in fairs such as Felix Art Fair (with onetrickpony). Her work has been shown in Los Angeles, New York, and Paris, and she joined the Fountainhead Residency program in 2024.Henriquez lives and works in Los Angeles, continuing to create paintings that bridge personal narrative and collective human experience.