viaje al infinito sueño solitario

Born 1987. Mérida, Venezuela
Based between Naarm (Melbourne) and Eora (Sydney), Australia
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Nadia Hernández’s multi-disciplinary practice reflects a process of bearing witness to the loss of home and the symbolic power of memory and memorialisation. Informed by her experience as a Venezuelan woman living in Australia, and positioning herself both within and outside the Venezuelan diaspora, Hernández makes art as a means to connect with a sense of place that exists beyond psychic and geographic boundaries.

She negotiates complex narratives, weaving the personal and the political, to create a highly recognisable visual language expressed through textiles, paintings, paper constructions, sculptures and installations. Her works weave together the complexities of memory, despair, hope and reconciliation, reminding us that these opposing sensations often co-exist.

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Nadia Hernández holds a BFA from Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, and a Certificate IV in design from Shillington College, Brisbane. In 2019, Hernández was the winner of the Churchie National Emerging Art Prize, one of Australia’s leading prizes for emerging artists. In the years since, she has found much critical success, including as the winner of the 2021 Grace Cossington Smith Art Award; and as a finalist in the Ramsay Art Prize (2023) – Australia’s most prestigious art prize for contemporary artists under 40 years, the Sir John Sulman Prize (2023), the inaugural Ellen José Art Award (2022), the Ravenswood Australian Women’s Art Prize (2021), the Wangaratta Contemporary Textile Award (2021, 2019), and the Create NSW Visual Arts Emerging Fellowship (2020),

Recent significant exhibitions include a major two-person exhibition, Speech Patterns: Nadia Hernández and Jon Campbell, at the Art Gallery of Western Australia (2022), and group exhibitions: Soft Power, Goulburn Regional Art Gallery (2023); Like a Wheel That Turns: The 2022 Macfarlane Commissions, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (2022); In the fibre of her being, Fairfield City Museum and Gallery (2021); and Miffy and Friends, QUT Art Museum, Brisbane (2020);

Hernández was commissioned to develop an immersive educational program and exhibition as Shepparton Art Museum’s EduLAB artist (2020), and was a recipient of the Bundanon Trust Artist in Residence (2019). In 2017 Hernández was selected by the City of Sydney as their official artist for the New Year’s Eve celebrations (2017).

Her work is held in the collections of Artbank, National Gallery of Victoria, and Art Gallery of Western Australia, as well as in many private collections.

Nadia Hernández is represented by STATION, Melbourne/Sydney.