GLENDALE, CA – ReflectSpace at Glendale Central Library is pleased to present Dreams Gather Here, a solo exhibition by Rachel Hakimian Emenaker, on view from February 17 through April 26, 2026. The exhibition explores how the cultural memory of diasporic communities is preserved in the history of material objects. Moving across geographies that include Armenia, Lebanon, Russia, South America, and the United States, Emenaker’s work reflects on how people, objects, and gestures carry memory through time, forming the foundations of new futures and new cities.
Emenaker is a Los Angeles-based artist working across installation, craft, sculpture, painting, sound, and textiles blending Eastern and Western art and craft traditions. She earned her MFA from UCLA. Her work has been presented in solo exhibitions at Grand Central Arts Center, Luce Gallery in Turin, UCLA Broad Art Center, Guest House in Inglewood, the American University of Armenia, and Earl and Virginia Green Gallery, as well as multiple group exhibitions in Southern California. She received the 2024 Dedalus MFA Fellowship and the 2023 UCLA Elaine Krown Klein Fine Arts Scholarship.
With an American father and a Syrian-Armenian mother, Emenaker’s childhood was spent in Suriname (South America) and Russia. She grew up multilingual and multicultural, immersed in Dutch, Russian, Armenian, American, and Surinamese cultures. Emenaker moved to the United States as an adult to start her university education in art.
Employing batik (wax and dye), sculpture, tile, and other media, Emenaker’s work is a meditation on diasporic architecture. Fragments, inherited gestures, and long-traveled materials converge in sculptural and installation-based works that speak directly to communities like Los Angeles, Moscow, Kessab, and Van — cities that witness, absorb, and hold countless migratory stories and dreams.
“For communities shaped by migration, grief, and rupture, dreaming can be a way of re-remembering and reimagining,” says Emenaker. “Dreams often become portable homes, a place to rest when permanence is impossible.”
Dreams Gather Here allows us that precious moment to pause and reflect on what dreams and home may mean to us.
- An opening reception with the artist will be held on Saturday, February 28, from 6:30 p.m. – 8:30 p.m. at ReflectSpace, located inside Central Library 222 East Harvard Street Glendale, CA 91205, and an artist’s talk will be held in the same place on Tuesday, April 21, 2026, at 6:30 p.m. For more information, visit ReflectSpace.org.
