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# What We Hide, What We Perform, and What Painting Still Knows! Artist Spotlight Liz Hernández
- URL: https://www.catapult-platform.art/liz-hernandez-can-a-painted-mask-tell-the-truth/
- Published: 2026-05-01T11:27:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-06-15T20:55:44.000Z
- Description: Liz Hernández paints memory and identity as something unstable, worn, and performed. An artist spotlight on masks, truth, and transformation.
- Author: Dominique Catherina Foertig
- Tags: Artist in Focus
> *“Her figures multiply inside themselves, as if a single face could hold an entire chorus.”*
## **The Face That Refuses to Stay One Thing**
[**Liz Hernández’s**](https://liz-hernandez.com/?ref=catapult-platform.art) portraits behave like living mirrors. They hold several selves at once, quietly rearranging meaning while you look.
****Liz Hernandez**, large-scale mural at SFMOMA. Photo by Katherine Dutiel. Image courtesy of the artist.
Recent projects at [**SFMOMA**](https://www.sfmoma.org/?ref=catapult-platform.art), [**ICA LA**](https://www.theicala.org/en?ref=catapult-platform.art) and [**Pt.2 Gallery**](https://www.part2gallery.com/?ref=catapult-platform.art) show how she expands this language across scale and material.
In each context the figures keep their calm, wide eyed presence, but something changes in how they inhabit space.
****Liz Hernandez**, mural installation at ICA LA. Photo by Jeff McLane / ICA LA. Image courtesy of the artist.
****Liz Hernandez**, mural detail at ICA LA. Photo by Jeff McLane / ICA LA. Image courtesy of the artist.
****Liz Hernandez**, mural installation at ICA LA, alternate view. Photo by Jeff McLane / ICA LA. Image courtesy of the artist.
The murals breathe like public speech, the paintings feel more intimate and slow, the clay works anchor everything in the weight of the body.
What stays constant is the sense that identity is restless.
****Liz Hernandez**, portrait with works from **Population of the Mask*. Photo by Ryan Whelan. Image courtesy of the artist.
****Liz Hernandez**, studio view while painting a large mask-portrait, 2025\. Photo by the artist. Image courtesy of the artist.
### **A Language of Multiplying Selves**
Hernández builds her compositions in layers. Faces appear inside bigger faces, hands open toward unexpected versions of the same person, and small bodies curl into the architecture of a head.
****Liz Hernandez**, **Population of the Mask* installation view at Jack Hanley Gallery. Photo by the gallery. Image courtesy of the artist.
****Liz Hernandez**, **Population of the Mask*, installation view at Jack Hanley Gallery. Photo by the gallery. Image courtesy of the artist.
The effect is disarming. You sense memory pushing against the edges of a portrait, asking to be seen from more than one direction.
The tones are warm pinks, browns and creams, but beneath that softness lies something sharper, a recognition that the self is rarely neat.
The work does not explain this. It simply lets you witness the shifting.
****Liz Hernandez**, **Population of the Mask*, installation view at Jack Hanley Gallery. Photo by the gallery. Image courtesy of the artist.
****Liz Hernandez**, **Population of the Mask*, installation view at Jack Hanley Gallery. Photo by the gallery. Image courtesy of the artist.
### **Ventriloquism of the Interior**
In the PDF her practice is described as a kind of ventriloquism, a quiet collaboration with the voices that live inside us .
[Liz Hernández - Biography, Shows, Articles & More | ArtsyExplore Liz Hernández’s biography, achievements, artworks, auction results, and shows on Artsy.Artsy](https://www.artsy.net/artist/liz-hernandez?ref=catapult-platform.art)
Hernández treats these interior presences not as ghosts but as companions. The paintings feel like negotiations, a moment where the inner chorus leans forward to speak.
****Liz Hernandez**, studio process, documenting drawing and painting. Images courtesy of the artist.
You are not asked to decode a fixed message. You are invited to stay with the ambiguity, to notice how one figure might be ancestral, another imagined, another still forming.
It becomes a portrait of becoming rather than a portrait of being.
****Liz Hernandez**, studio portraits with works on paper. Photos by Brianna Kalajian. Images courtesy of the artist.
### **When Murals Carry Memory**
The mural works widen her vocabulary. At [**SFMOMA the grid**](https://www.sfmoma.org/read/works-process-liz-hernandezs-sources-of-inspiration/?ref=catapult-platform.art) structure of lungs, trees, words and symbols reads like a collective breathing exercise.
****Liz Hernandez**, **Talismán*, installation view at Pt.2 Gallery. Photo by Pt.2 Gallery. Image courtesy of the artist.
****Liz Hernandez**, **Talismán*, alternate installation view at Pt.2 Gallery. Photo by Pt.2 Gallery. Image courtesy of the artist.
ICA LA extends this rhythm outdoors, where the red and black palette catches sunlight and shadow throughout the day.
[Bay Area Walls: Liz Hernández Finds Inspiration in Mexico CityRead an interview with the artist + get a behind-the-scenes look at her new mural.SFMOMAread more](https://www.sfmoma.org/read/works-process-liz-hernandezs-sources-of-inspiration/?ref=catapult-platform.art)
[Liz Hernández: Donde piso, crecen cosas (Where I step, things grow) - Institute of Contemporary Art, Los AngelesICA LAInstitute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles](https://www.theicala.org/en/exhibitions/567-liz-hernandez-donde-piso-crecen-cosas-where-i-step-things-grow?ref=catapult-platform.art)
Both murals center care, migration and ancestral knowledge, but in the tone of a public archive.
****Liz Hernandez**, studio view with large work in progress. Photo by the artist. Image courtesy of the artist.
They feel woven rather than painted, as if each block holds a story offered for communal reading.
The shift from studio intimacy to civic scale gives her symbolism new resonance.
****Liz Hernandez**, **Where the Purple Flowers Cry*, installation view at Pt.2 Gallery, mobile preview. Photo by Pt.2 Gallery. Image courtesy of the artist.
****Liz Hernandez**, **Where the Purple Flowers Cry*, installation view at Pt.2 Gallery. Photo by Pt.2 Gallery. Image courtesy of the artist.
### **Clay as a Keeper of Stories**
Clay sits close to Hernández’s drawings and paintings. Terracotta heads covered in floral impressions echo the tenderness and complexity of her two dimensional figures.
****Liz Hernandez**, **Talismán* installation view at Pt.2 Gallery. Photo by Pt.2 Gallery. Image courtesy of the artist.
****Liz Hernandez**, **Talismán*, installation view featuring terracotta sculptures and two large paintings. Photo by Pt.2 Gallery. Image courtesy of the artist.
Clay remembers touch. It records pressure, slight shifts of weight, the temperature of a hand. Her sculptures carry these traces without sentimentality.
[Works Public — pt.2:pt.2:
pt.2:](https://www.part2gallery.com/lizhernandezpublic?ref=catapult-platform.art)
They feel grounded, steady, aware of their own presence. Even when quiet, they hold the same multilayered identity that threads through her entire practice.
****Liz Hernandez**, portrait while painting a large monochrome work in her studio. Photo by the artist. Image courtesy of the artist.
### **About Liz Hernández**
Liz Hernández is a Mexican born, Oakland, California based artist whose work spans painting, drawing, murals and sculpture.
****Liz Hernandez**, studio portrait while working on an embroidered textile piece. Image courtesy of the artist.
Her visual language blends personal memory with symbolic imagery drawn from Mexican traditions, often using nested faces and repeated motifs to examine identity, care and the shifting boundaries of the self.
****Liz Hernandez**, portrait while working on mural panels. Photo by Katherine Du Tiel. Image courtesy of the artist.
### **Why This Work Matters**
Can a painted mask tell the truth? In Hernández’s world, truth is never singular. It is layered, shifting, and revealed through time.
Her figures hold multiple selves at once, each surfacing with its own tempo and weight.
[Hermana/Hermano/Hermanx — Et al. / Et al. etc.Et al. is a gallery directed by Jackie Im and Aaron Harbour. The gallery serves as a site for exhibitions and events, working with its select roster as well as other local and international artists, performers, writers, publishers, and curators. Et al. was founded in 2013 by Im, Harbour, and Facundo Argañaraz, in the basement of Union Cleaners in San Francisco’s Chinatown as a continuation of Im and Harbour’s curatorial project. In 2017, Et al. opened its second location, Et al. etc., a storefront gallery in the Mission, and worked closely with Kevin Krueger who continues to assist now and then. In 2024, the Chinatown location closed after 11 years in operation.
Et al. books is a new and used bookstore that operates out of Et al.’s Mission location. Open in 2021, it continues to expand its scope, with high-quality books in many genres. Et al./Et al. books hosts all manner of readings and events in the space.
Et al. / Et al. etc.](https://etaletc.com/hermanahermanohermanx?ref=catapult-platform.art)
The mask becomes the meeting point of these selves, not a barrier but a threshold, showing how identity is built, unbuilt, and rebuilt again.
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Follow[**Liz Hernández on Instagram**](https://www.instagram.com/spellofmyself/?ref=catapult-platform.art)and share this feature with someone who loves portraits that challenge certainty.
[Liz HernándezCargo](https://liz-hernandez.com/?ref=catapult-platform.art)
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