Born in Mérida, Venezuela, artist Nadia Hernandez spent her youth in Tucson, in the United States, and has since made a home for her creative practice in the Wurundjeri Country of Melbourne, Australia. While Nadia Hernandez studied design and fashion,, there was an undeniable pull to the realm of fine art. Her work transcends a single medium, often embracing collaboration and activation as she illuminates the multitude of parallel histories that shape a sense of identity, culture, and heritage in our modern world.

Hernandez's studio is a testament to her eclectic approach to art-making. Here, she experiments with painting, mixed media, textiles, sculptures, and installations. Whether it be sourcing secondhand materials to become visual allusions, taking from her own familial archive, or creating her own aesthetic language through text and abstract forms waiting to be deciphered, she manipulates the viewer on multiple sensory levels. Her control of her palettes set the tone, evoking an idealistic wanderlust or even a militarist presence. The ambiguity she plays with carries over into her installations. Embracing relational aesthetics, she allows the actions, artistry, and performative actions of her audience and collaborators to help her works evolve and react to their environments and time. 

The influences that shape her artwork are as diverse as her techniques. In her early years, she found inspiration from folk and pop art, rethinking what it meant to view the everyday. Her style now incorporates a diverse set of influences, from the bold color and form of Abstract Expressionism to the intricate absurd layering of Surrealism, and the socially charged yet humor-imbued practices of the Dadaists; however, she views these monumental shifts in art through the lens of Latin American modernism. Thinking about artists like Jesus Soto, Carlos Cruzdias, and Garo alongside major non-European styles like the Tropicalia movement in Brazil, she embraces yet critiques their contributions. Her work channels their innovation with her own contemporary flare, which leaves us questioning the alternate, additional, and suppressed histories in our midst.

Hernández’s art is a profound exploration of identity, heritage, and protest, deeply rooted in her experience as a Venezuelan living in the diaspora. As personal and political narratives intersect, her perspective of existing in a liminal space between the different cultures of her upbringing reveals larger questions of truth in identity and history. The themes of her art are steeped in the rich history and culture of Venezuela, the complexities of geopolitical contexts, and the powerful role of art in pushing and fighting political agendas. Through the writings, notes, reflections, and poetry that she creates to accompany each body of work, Hernández delves into the daily exchanges that teach us about blending cultures and languages across borders. Her art critically examines the past and present, offering speculative futures that speak to the nuanced and often dark idealization of a lost homeland. Nadia Hernandez’s work is the act of coming together to claim culture and unity over polarizing forces as we examine the complexities of identity and belonging that exist today.