As an only child growing up in the Netherlands between two single-parent households after her mother and father divorced, Hadassah Emmerich spent much of her youth by herself. As a result, her creative side blossomed as she passed the time drawing, painting, and writing. She enrolled at the Maastricht Institute of Arts, where, she says, “the moment I set foot in the painting department—the focus and the smell of oil paint drawing me in—I knew I wanted to dedicate my life to art.”
During her second year of school, Emmerich submitted a series of paintings for a competition at the Neuer Aachener Kunstverein art gallery in Aachen, Germany. When she got the call that her work had been selected as a finalist, she realized she could turn her passion into a profession. In 2016, after earning a master’s in fine arts at Goldsmiths, University of London, she started her eponymous studio in Brussels.
Emmerich’s work is known for its sensual interpretations of flora and the female body. Her process involves researching visual references, such as images of plants, fruits, or bodies in certain positions, and then transferring a digital composition of those elements to a sheet of vinyl. She then cuts out the composition into puzzle-like stencils to paint on before manually printing them on canvas, paper, or the wall.
Hips Don’t Lie (2022), on view at Be-Part in Waregem, Belgium
“At first sight, my work looks colorful and bright, but a trained eye will be able to detect many different tones,” she says. “The right balance between warm and cold, dominant and passive, are important in giving my work its narrative complexity.”
Take, for example, Kiwi Kiss, in which ambiguous shapes at once suggest leaves and genitalia; or Rainbow Warriors, an abstract, colorful depiction of warriors creating a protective barricade that simultaneously explores the limitations of what society considers the ideal physical form.
As part of the What if Women Ruled the World? exhibition at the National Museum of Contemporary Art Athens, Emmerich created several custom murals and art rugs that will remain in the museum for the next three years. She is also preparing a series of large-scale paintings for the Schunck cultural center in the Netherlands.
For inspiration, Emmerich looks to magazines, the internet, and her city because of “its chaos and infrastructure, architecture, people, and music,” she says. “It makes me feel alive.”
This article originally appeared in HD’s May/June 2024 issue.
