About Brianna

Brianna L. Hernández (b. 1991) is a Chicana artist, curator, educator, and death doula guided by socially engaged practices. In the studio, she creates multi-media installations focused on end-of-life care, grief, and mourning rituals based on lived experience, cultural research, and collaborations with peers including death education workshops. In developing as an artist and creative professional Brianna credits her late mother, Sylvia D. Hernández, as her most significant mentor and inspiration for the creativity, resilience, and compassion she demonstrated throughout her life.

Hernández has participated in residencies at MacDowell, The Watermill Center, Santa Fe Art Institute, The Constance Saltonstall Foundation for the Arts, SPACES, Farwell House, and has been a visiting artist-in-residence for the Guild Hall Student Art Festival and the Parrish Art Museum Annual Student Exhibition.

Brianna proudly serves as Director of Curation and Board Secretary of Ma’s House & BIPOC Art Studio on the Shinnecock Indian Reservation in Southampton, New York. Additionally, she is the Board Treasurer at Walker’s Point Center for the Arts in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Committee Member for the Gente Chicana/SOYmos Chicanos Arts Fund of the Greater Milwaukee Foundation, and was a NALAC Advocacy Leadership Institute Fellow with the National Association of Latino Arts and Cultures.

As a curator, Brianna works with artists to make socially-charged topics publicly accessible in order to create opportunities for education and empathy. As an extension of this approach, she collaborates with community health researchers to incorporate the arts into collection and dissemination of public health project data. For her curatorial project, Reclaiming Death, she was a recipient of Hyperallergic’s 2023–24 Emily Hall Tremaine Journalism Fellowship for Curators.

Learn more by exploring interviews and press or the linked CV here.