To Grandmothers House We Go - Studies by Emiliana Stein

Join us for an Opening Reception for “To Grandmother’s House We Go” - Studies by Emiliana Stein.
Following is a description of the work from the artist:
To Grandmother’s House We Go
This body of work was created in my grandmother’s art studio. Which is a space I returned to again and again, spending weeks at a time working alongside her. Partly to take care of her and partly just for the joy her presence brings. Some of these pieces were made in her presence, in conversation and companionship; others were created during periods when she was in the hospital, her absence becoming its own kind of presence. Every work in this exhibition is shaped by her, consciously or unconsciously, carrying traces of her influence, care, and endurance.
As a queer person, I have spent much of my life navigating the grief of familial rejection. The experience of being estranged from the structures that are supposed to offer belonging, of moving through the world without the certainty of parental acceptance, has profoundly shaped me. Finding acceptance in my grandmother later in adulthood arrived as an unexpected gift. It marked a turning point: a reimagining of kinship, care, and what it means to be held by family. In many ways, she became the maternal figure I had long searched for, and that relationship became foundational to my healing.
The work reflects this ongoing process of repair. Throughout the exhibition, blue-and-white porcelain patterns recur as a visual language. Growing up, my mother decorated our home with blue-and-white china; these intricate motifs have become symbols of my relationship to blood family: beautiful, fragile, inherited, and complicated. They operate as both ornament and wound, carrying histories of longing, estrangement, and attachment.
As my grandmother’s health has declined, I have found myself confronting the reality of her mortality. Gradually, the work has begun to absorb that awareness. What began as a record of shared time has become entangled with anticipatory grief, a visual practice of loving someone while reckoning with the inevitability of their absence. These pieces inhabit the space between celebration and mourning, between presence and loss.
To Grandmother’s House We Go is ultimately an offering: a queer meditation on chosen belonging, intergenerational care, and the people who make survival possible. And subtly It is a love letter to my grandmother, a tribute to the sanctuary she created for me, and an acknowledgment that while I wish for more time, all any of us are ever given is now. This exhibition celebrates that now, and celebrates her and celebrates a life she gave me permission to embrace and ultimately the understanding that I never needed it.