Ana Hernandez

Ana Hernandez, HUMANITY, 2023, acrylic, cotton thread, repurposed “binary beads” on canvas hanging between reclaimed wood, 58 x 60 x 1.5 inches, reads top-down, left-right. Photography by Stephen Lomonaco and courtesy of the artist & Other Plans Gallery, New Orleans.

“Ana Hernandez’ A Sense of Memory grapples with the legacy and fate of indigeneity in the Americas both conceptually and materially. The lone figurine of a human brain appears fossilized, or preserved like a taxidermied butterfly inside of its stained wood casing– a brain in the enclosure of the museum, also enclosed by the memory of its journey–memory that cannot be contained or erased. Memory instead continuously finding itself in its descendants–continually finding itself enmeshed and enraged, pushing back against the limitations of the present.”-Kristina Kay Robinson

Ana Hernandez’s “Slavery Time” places an assemblage artwork on a deconstructed book at the intersection of Chartres Street and Esplanade Avenue. The area was an active slave market, where human beings were caged in pens.

“I was thinking about trauma rooted in narratives,” Hernandez said, adding that the slave pens in the work are also a nod to detained immigrants in U.S. holding cells today. “People who are waiting for their inevitable, unforeseen fate.”-Deborah Vankin

“The Marcellus,” by Ana Berta Hernandez, in “Learn a River’s Name” The Delaware text in the photo is one of a few river name etymology texts that was hung throughout the gallery when the show was up at the Schuylkill Center.

"Work by New Orleans artist, Ana Berta Hernandez, a New Orleans participating artist in the Bull Meets the Bayou, is on display in the Pleiades upstairs gallery, including an intricately layered piece called “Fields of Filth” created specifically for this exhibit. It singles out North Carolina on a gilded background made from the imprints of hogs’ feet for our industrial pig slaughtering industry and the concomitant environmental destruction wrought."-Aaron Mandel