Hadassah Emmerich ‒
-Hadassah Emmerich is known for her multi-layered works that explore the body and identity. Her first solo exhibition at COSAR, entitled “Velvet Lava Lotus,” evokes a vivid constellation of textures and states: velvety softness, flowing suppleness, and the unfolding bloom of a lotus flower. Together, these images suggest surfaces that curve, open, and transform; an atmosphere in which sensuality and materiality merge.
Emmerich‘s practice is at the intersection of painting, printmaking, and installation, exploring how ornamentation, the body, and surfaces function as carriers of desire, projection, and cultural memory. Over the past ten years, she has developed a hybrid process in which hand-cut vinyl stencils are used for direct transfer onto canvas, resulting in autonomous, self-contained aesthetic images.
Her immersive wall installations, which she creates using the same technique, are spectacular, often transforming architecture across multiple floors with visually stunning images and confronting the viewer directly with the all-over effect of the images. Recent examples of these works at the Bonnefanten Museum in Maastricht, the EMST in Athens, and most recently at the Kunstmuseum Den Haag testify to the immediate impact of these works. Working with vinyl stencils allows the artist to repeat and vary at the same time, creating a unique painterly surface.
Within this process, the images unfold through multi-layered ornamental structures. Emmerich combines stylized plant, fruit, and flower motifs from Indonesian batik and Art Deco with references to the female body, thus constructing a visual vocabulary in which sensuality acts as a powerful and vital force.
Instead of directly depicting the female body, it appears indirectly through folds reminiscent of skin, swollen, breast-like contours, and petal-like shapes reminiscent of vulva forms, oscillating between abstraction, plant ornaments, and physical presence.
In these works, ornamentation functions as a field in which intimacy, projection, and physical presence are intertwined. The surfaces seem to pulsate with movement: patterns bloom like flowers, shapes expand like molten material, and contours become velvety textures. The resulting images oscillate between the botanical, the ornamental, and the physical, inviting the viewer into a space of perception where sensation and interpretation unfold simultaneously.
Emmerich‘s Dutch-Indonesian background shapes this approach and sharpens her attention to how decorative languages convey layered colonial and cultural histories. Batik patterns, modernist ornaments, and contemporary painterly gestures overlap in her works, revealing how aesthetic pleasure and historical complexity can often be found in the same visual structures. In Velvet Lava Lotus, the ornamental surface becomes a place of transformation—where softness meets eruption and where the body appears not as a fixed form but as a sensual, unfolding presence.
Hadassah Emmerich was born in the Netherlands in 1974 and lives and works in Brussels.
Hadassah Emmerich studied at the Academy of Fine Arts, Maastricht, at HISK / Ghent, and at Goldsmith College, London.
Her most recent exhibitions were on view at “False Flat,” Bonnefanten Museum, Maastricht, 2023, “Epicurean Eden,” EMST, Athens, 2024, “Painting after Painting,” SMAK, Ghent, 2025, “Petals Pulp Papaya Plunge,” Kunstmuseum Den Haag, 2026.
Public Collections:
Bonnefanten Museum, Maastricht⁄ Kunstmuseum Den Haag⁄ Museum Voorlinden, Wassenaar⁄ Museum voor Moderne Kunst, Arnhem⁄ Schunck, Heerlen ⁄ Fries Museum⁄ Leeuwarden, Rabobank, Netherlands
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HADASSAH EMMERICH, Interlace
Oil and acrylic on linen, 186 cm x 131 cm, 2025 -
HADASSAH EMMERICH
Velvet Lava Lotus, Installation view COSAR, 2026 -
HADASSAH EMMERICH, Continuum
Oil and acrylic on linen, 130,5 cm x 138 cm, 2026 -
HADASSAH EMMERICH, Body Bend
180 cm x 90 cm, oil and acrylic on linen, 2026 -
HADASSAH EMMERICH
Velvet Lava Lotus, Installation view COSAR, 2026 -
HADASSAH EMMERICH, Interlace
Oil and acrylic on linen, 186 cm x 131 cm, 2026 -
HADASSAH EMMERICH
Velvet Lava Lotus, Installation view COSAR, 2026 -
HADASSAH EMMERICH, Oben Ohne VI
Oil and acrylic on linen, 110 cm x 76 cm, 2025 -
HADASSAH EMMERICH, Sparrow Spine
Oil and acrylic on linen, 133 cm x 92 cm, 2025 -
HADASSAH EMMERICH
Velvet Lava Lotus, Installation view COSAR, 2026 -
HADASSAH EMMERICH, Volupté
Oil and acrylic on linen, 140 cm x 128,5 cm, 2025