Portrait and cover photos by Jose Miguel Gomez-Pleitez

Emily Rose Navarro

2024–2027 BCA Studio Resident

2023 ACTivate Resident

Emily Rose is an interdisciplinary multimedia artist. Themes of home, identity, and memory are central in her paintings, drawings, sculptures, and installations. Surrounded by her family’s oral stories, a blend of cultures, food, celebrations, and spiritual beliefs, Emily Rose infuses these narratives using found objects, textiles, dreams, and memory into her work. In the retelling of these stories and memories, the artist borrows some of the original elements while changing other parts, straddling between reality, make-believe, and nostalgia.

Currently working on her three-part memory installation series “Homecoming” (subject to change), Emily Rose was awarded numerous art residencies to help finish these projects, such as the Kala Art Institute and the ACTivate residency at the Boston Center for the Arts. This winter, Emily Rose will be working on her last installment of “Homecoming” at Mass MoCA. Group exhibitions of her work included Elevated Thought, ShowUp Inc. (formerly Beacon Gallery), Essex Art Center, Stevens-Coolidge House and Garden, Kathryn Schultz Gallery, The Dodge House Gallery, Mary Castelnovo Gallery, Copley Society of Art, The Umbrella Arts Center, Scollay Square Gallery, The Urbano Project, and Boston Arts Academy. Publications of her work can be found in the Boston Art Review and Artscope.

Among her accomplishments, Emily Rose was awarded the Wagner Impact Studio Award, Massachusetts Cultural Council Grants for Creative Individuals, Boston Media Arts Empowerment Award, Edward Mitchell Bannister National Exhibition: Celebrating BIPOC Artists, and the Copley Society of Art National Show: Crossing Borders Grant.

Emily Rose’s three-year BCA Studio Residency is supported by Wagner Foundation.

2023 ACTivate Residency Project Description

“El Salón: Reimagining Self-love, Rituals, and Healing in the Kitchen” is a multi-media installation centered on creating space for reflection, connection, and healing around identity, hair, and cultural haircare rituals. The project includes haircare rituals, memories from the artist’s family members, and commonly found objects in the kitchen. Accompanied by interviews from family members and sounds from her kitchen, the selected objects act as instruments to evoke new memories to reimagine self-love, acceptance, and healing. All of these elements together create an environment of auditory rituals activating one’s memories, senses, and connection between the sounds and mix-media installation.

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