Santa Ana, California – Rachel Hakimian Emenaker paints contemporary life in Los Angeles and abroad, but his paintings mainly evoke ghosts. The solo exhibition of the Armenian-American artist at the Grand Central Art Center by California State University, Fullerton, Deep roots among the fallen trees,, represents scenes of gentrification, religion and homeland in paintings, ceramics and installations. But with limited information present, it is not clear if these images recreate memories of Armenia or other places where Emenaker has been raised, notably Paramaribo, Suriname and Moscow, in Russia.
The only clear reference point is Los Angeles Moderne, which can be identified by a large logo for the fast food chain belonging to the local Armenian. The logo, a giant “Z”, is looming behind passers -by in the installation “in a diasporical architecture” (2024), a work made up of four batik-A panels that vaguely hang on simple wooden structures, creating a private box in which see the city scenes. There is nothing on the back of the fabrics, and no gap pointing where to enter the installation, so seeing the work requires a panel aside, like spreading a veil and crossing the world of the living on the dead.
In each Batik, Emenaker reverses the color of its line, transforming typically black contours into shiny white contours. This, associated with the trend of the material to create translucent and variant pigments, reveals all subjects as if the spirits of the beyond. There are ghostly grandmothers traveling the streets of Babushkas and strange children in church clothes.
Religion has repercussions throughout the exhibition. Another Batik installation in a box includes three individual works: “Traces # 5”, “Traces # 6” and “Traces # 7” (each 2025). The canvases, which face the outside, resemble the artist transforming quick sketches in the form of a batik, including the facades of the church, interiors and scaffolding. An echo sound echoes “Untitled” (2024), a squat and ceramic tiled box in the center of the installation. The noises it produces are not distinct, which suggests a memory more than a sermon, but the ceramic structure seems to be the cornerstone of a historic church.
Indeed, Emenaker likes as much ceramics as she is of Batik and painting. She shaped large pieces of pearl porcelain to create “365 prayers / 365 fists” (2025), a huge rosary hanging on the wall and sheets on the floor. She also posed the glazed ceramic tiles to create the “underground floor” mosaic path (2024), which alternates between the scenes rendered in traditional blue and white porcelain with motifs painted on a variant of earth in brown earth. She paints halo iconoclastic saints in her comic style, but also repeats the patterns of characters, cats and bombs that explode – childhood memories seem to be intertwined with religion, greed and war.
Could these problems be the reason why Emenaker represents its houses as ghostly landscapes rather than a solid soil? Without firmly anchoring his works at a specific time, Emenaker's works of art are not moored of time – they could reflect his past, or foreshadow an act of disappearance in the future.
Rachel Hakimian Emenaker: deep roots among the fallen trees Continue to the Grand Central Art Center in California State University, Fullerton (125 North Broadway,
Santa Ana, California) until May 11. The exhibition was organized by Savannah Lee.
