ReflectSpace at Glendale Central Library presents Dreams Gather Here, a solo exhibition by Rachel Hakimian Emenaker, on view through April 26. 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.

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 guests that precious moment to pause and reflect on what dreams and home may mean.

An opening reception with the artist will be held on Saturday, Feb. 28 from 6:30 p.m. – 8:30 p.m. at ReflectSpace, located inside Central Library at 222 E. Harvard St. in Glendale. For more information, visit ReflectSpace.org.