Exhibitions 2025: Emma Kathleen Hepburn Ferrer: The Unicorn, and Other Creatures of Hope

November 6, 2025 - January 14, 2026 | Reception: Thursday, November 6, 5:30–7:30 PM

The University of Massachusetts Dartmouth’s CVPA Campus Gallery is proud to present Emma Kathleen Hepburn Ferrer: The Unicorn, and Other Creatures of Hope, the artist’s first institutional solo exhibition in the United States. A reception will be held on Thursday, November 6, from 5:30-7:30 PM in the CVPA Campus Gallery, located on the first floor of the CVPA building at 285 Old Westport Road, Dartmouth, MA 02747. The Artist Talk (Lecture Hall 153) is planned for 6 PM on the same day with introduction by Dr. Nina Levent, Founding Director of Sapar Contemporary. UMass Dartmouth Music faculty Jing Wang and Will Riley will perform erhu-guitar duets during the reception. Light refreshments will be served. Visitor parking for the reception is in lot 5, 6, 8A, & 8.

In this new body of work, Ferrer turns her gaze to the unicorn — a creature whose mythology has traversed millennia, continents, and belief systems — as a vehicle for exploring ideas of liberty, captivity, purity, and transcendence. Drawing upon a decade-long fascination with The Unicorn Tapestries at The Met Cloisters, Ferrer reimagines the unicorn as a deeply spiritual being, a symbol both of sovereignty and sacrifice.

Much like her acclaimed 2025 debut solo exhibition The Scapegoat at Sapar Contemporary (New York), which drew inspiration from William Holman Hunt’s eponymous biblical canvas, The Unicorn continues Ferrer’s exploration of ritual, mythology, and the sacred. Her paintings reinterpret Christian iconography through a universal lens: in The Annunciation of the Unicorn, for instance, a humble mare receives the divine message that she will bear the first unicorn, while in The Chosen One the newborn unicorn lies in a manger-like setting, evoking parallels to the Nativity.

Living and working in Tuscany, Ferrer engages deeply with the Christian and pagan mythologies that saturate the European landscape. “Where before in my work there was melancholy, now there is mystery,” she reflects. “Where before there was tragedy, now there is a glimmer of hope.”

Her paintings, executed on raw jute, linen, stone, wood, and silk with refined gold leaf and embroidered details, echo the spiritual flatness of Italian quattrocento panels and the ethereal screen paintings of Japan’s Edo period, or the paintings on silk and rice paper of the Song Dynasty. The result is a body of work that feels timeless — existing in an eternal dawn where the boundaries between myth, memory, and faith dissolve.

About Emma Kathleen Hepburn Ferrer

The paintings of Emma Kathleen Hepburn Ferrer (b. 1994) act as portals into the spiritual imagination of pre-modern art. Through her depictions of biblical creatures — scapegoats, lambs, unicorns — she bridges the sacred past with the existential present, part of a growing movement of contemporary figurative painters reinvigorating the dialogue between art, faith, and the natural world.

Raised between Los Angeles and Florence, Ferrer studied at the Florence Academy of Art before completing her MFA at Central Saint Martins, London. Her early education in the Italian Renaissance and 19th century traditions — paired with later study in History and Visual Arts at Harvard University and SUNY — informs her synthesis of technique and theology.

Ferrer’s work has been featured in Vogue, Artnet News, Air Mail, De Tijd, and Avenue Magazine among others. She has exhibited internationally, including The Scapegoat (Sapar Contemporary, New York), Green Pastures (Quartier Kortrijk, Belgium), and in group shows throughout America and the UK. Her paintings are held in private collections across Europe, the Middle East, and the United States.

About CVPA Campus Gallery

The College of Visual and Performing Arts (CVPA) is the only dedicated visual and performing arts college among Massachusetts public universities. Offering over 500 students a complete art school education within a national research university experience, CVPA awards BFA, BA, BS, and MFA degrees. Centrally located between Boston, Providence, and Cape Cod, UMass Dartmouth enrolls over 7,000 students, offering more than 170 undergraduate, master’s, and doctoral programs.

As part of its commitment to public engagement, CVPA Campus Gallery hosts free exhibitions, artist talks, and performances, offering a platform for artists whose work bridges varied disciplines and perspectives. Previous exhibitions have showcased contemporary voices across painting, sculpture, performance, site-specific installations, and new media, underscoring CVPA’s commitment to experimentation, diversity, and critical inquiry.