Venues

Emily Hanako Momohara: Recent Works
September 28-November 3

Exhibition Reception
Friday September 28, 5 pm-9 pm

Emily Hanako Momohara creates conceptual landscapes in homage to her Japanese, Okinawan, and Hawaiian heritage. Intrigued by collective memory and its relationship to the imagination, her images combine the real and fictional to create places that explore familial history, legacy, myth, and belonging. 
Dealing with issues of loss and death, many of Momohara’s photographs take their inspiration from Japanese scroll paintings depicting the four seasons where nature’s cycle symbolizes the order of life, death, and regeneration. Fleeting memories slip away, while revelation and growth evolve with each season. Eerily beautiful and strangely quiet, Momohara’s photographs convey at once the idea of obscurity and the quest for information. 
Momohara grew up near Seattle, Washington and earned her BFA in photography and her BA in art history from the University of Washington. She went on to receive her MFA in expanded media from the University of Kansas, where she studied under Roger Shimomura. She is currently an Assistant Professor of Art at the Art Academy of Cincinnati, where she heads the photography department. Momohara exhibits her work nationally, and participated in several residency programs, including the Center for Photography at Woodstock.

Founded in January of 2009, PAC Gallery specializes in contemporary art. The gallery centers on the concept of art as the language underscoring the commonality of experiences in a global society. Cincinnati has an historic and thriving arts scene, and PAC’s mission is to cultivate and promote emerging and established contemporary artists from Cincinnati and around the globe who explore similar themes, such as urbanization, globalization, and aesthetics. The gallery actively seeks project-based collaborations with other galleries and cultural institutions to cultivate and promote contemporary art both domestically and abroad.