To give life to an image is like retaking it of its place of origin, the Earth,
we return to be nothing more than that, just image. An image done of hearth
that life has spent.

Without name we would lack origin and a mortuary postulate that the memory
extends. The present creates a question in time, in art, in the origin of the
image that we insist to reconstruct to facilitate basic necessities of
survival. Norah Hernandez is not inclusive to the passage of time or the
simulacrum of the memory; she intimates with the imperceptible image. The
presence/ absence concept has attracted this transformer of clay has to rethink
her way to observe life, its unfolding through the years and to materialize
those elusive pauses that transcend the visible matter.

Twenty something body less heads has retaken her studio these last years. Some
half sleep and others as spectators; they are kept awake in a present drowned
of transitory imagery. The artist/creator pursues her innate ability to make
these imaginary faces from hearth. Were she elaborates an epic metaphor of our
universal origin. Norah rehears with her space almost metaphysically, inspired
by the processes that are difficult to interpret as is the process of the
death.

Norah began her career formally in the city of San Francisco, where she studied
for almost one decade with artist Elaine Bagdley Arnoux and ceramist Debora
Hoch. During that time Norah exhibited her work in multiple forums including in
Santa Clara the Triton Museum of Art in 2003.  Norah has exhibited
internationally in Monaco France at the "Landscapes" group show in 2000
supported by UNESCO and the exhibitions "Human Evolution" in Osaka, Japan;
"Peace" in the Memorial War Museum in Seoul, Korea South in 2001. Exhibited for
the first time the Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña in 1995; and “ Muestra
Nacional” at the mentioned institution in 2000. Her recent works were presented
in year 2005 at Sin Titulo, a gallery dedicated to Contemporary Art in San
Juan,
PR.


Through her process, Norah relieves a path of sublime realities chained to a
personal narrative that reflects a philosophical engagement. What represents
the image in time? If is contained in a subjective reality: Norah processes
metaphysical discourses to answer this complex question: nothing that we pruned
to see is real. It comes to us with several approaches with the discernible
object and also with the emotions assembled in a daily basis flooded of
unreciprocated questions.

Norah through her work stimulated a trilogy of the image: construction,
destruction and reconstruction. Were an image is constructed with slight
reference to the material plane, where it alludes solely to its origin. The
image is destroyed when its origin is already evident. The image without origin
is reconstructed, thus neutralizing itself within a present of memories. It
proposes a reflection on the multiple realities that drag contemporary subjects
on the absent and present body, the physical importance and the origin of our
instincts, primary emotions and the invisibility. This reconstructs manifold
profiles in rest, heartless, in calm. No of them shows the atrocious reality
that can overcome some act to us of violence, but that space of calm that the
physical death or a deep dream produces.

The work of Norah in essence documents transitions of life, the concept of the
dream and the course of emotions. The burned nude mud with slight hints of
coloration overflows an endless number of intense intangible emotions. The
minimum use of coloration stands out in her work; the use encaustic techniques
invite us to observe an invaded skin as a reflection of the process that the
physical death may produce.

- Through the time women they have amended and mended. For me working with old
pieces is reminiscence of this repair. Molding the bags in bodily forms and
painting them is the creation of my personal tapestry, is the historical
account of those things that I desire to amend. - Norah Hernández


The interpretation of her compositions invites to an introspection of life,
death and the origin of the image attached to many intangible body processes.
It is a reflection of the physical and moral death amended through a construct,
destruction and reconstruction of the concept of likeness. The artist creates
images that are committed genuinely with the image in the time, and the
figuration to us of which necessarily we do not want to see.