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 Latinx 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 colourful textiles, paper constructions, paintings, music, installations, sculptures, and murals. Her works weave together the complexities of memory, despair, hope and reconciliation, reminding us that these opposing sensations often co-exist.

Since Hernández’s first exhibition with STATION in 2021, she has found much acclaim, including as a finalist in the Ramsay Art Prize (2023), Australia’s most prestigious art prize for contemporary artists under 40 years, and in the Sir John Sulman Prize (2023). She was included in the 2022 Macfarlane Commissions exhibition at the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, and staged a major two-person exhibition, Speech Patterns: Nadia Hernández and Jon Campbell at the Art Gallery of Western Australia (2022). Hernández was the winner of the 2021 Grace Cossington Smith Art Award, and the winner of the 2019 Churchie National Emerging Art Prize, one of Australia’s leading prizes for emerging artists. She was a finalist in the inaugural Ellen José Art Award (2022), Ravenswood Australian Women’s Art Prize (2021), Wangaratta Contemporary Textile Award (2021, 2019), Create NSW Visual Arts Emerging Fellowship (2020), John Fries Award (2019), and Fisher Ghost Art Award (2021, 2017). 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).