iliana Emilia García

iliana emilia García is a multimedia artist whose practice spans drawing, painting, printmaking, and installations. She often works in large format drawings on canvas and paper and escalating installations depicting her most iconic symbol: the chair. Her work explores concepts of emotional history, collective and ancestral memory, and intimacy. A co-founder of the Dominican York Proyecto GRÁFICA, she holds an AAS from Altos de Chavón School of Design, a BFA from Parsons School of Design | The New School, and an MA in Biography and Memoir from The Graduate Center, CUNY.

García’s work focuses on the “poetic and emotional examination of the history of objects.” Through this, she focuses on the value assigned to objects, such as those that we own, those that come from our homes, and those that follow us through life. Certain objects, such as the chair, are seen as a recurring object which holds memories and signifies resilience. In her work, García visually documents objects that “trigger or build up memory.” Her work aims to link “objects, places, and emotions to convert [the objects themselves] into storytellers in their own right.” For García. The chair represents tradition and visual history; the heart represents a public symbol of intimacy within communal activities. Each of these symbols dierently represent remembrance and can be interpreted as an icon through which history can be told. The objects also represent emotional comfort and demonstrate García’s constant search for satisfaction in tradition.