Sharelly Emanuelson is an artist and researcher who delves into the intersections of tradition, heritage, emotions, and everyday Caribbean life. Her work spans different media, including filmmaking, video, installations, photography, mixed media, and scenic design. Through these mediums, she seeks new ways of understanding and creating knowledge. Using her own lived history, memories, and archives as her starting point, she questions and creates a reinterpretation or new verbal or visual narrative, allowing her to show subjectivity with unusual effects and combinations. Through her work, she contributes to the broadening of interdisciplinary research practices within the Caribbean Netherlands while striving to encourage experimentation and enhancement of imagination.
Emanuelson studied at the Audiovisual Media School of Arts in Utrecht, the Netherlands, and got her Master Artistic Research at the Royal Academy of the Arts in The Hague, the Netherlands. She has been widely recognized for her video installations and documentaries with screenings, awards (most recently Volkskrant Visual Art Audience award (2020), grants, and presenting her work in local, regional, and international festivals and institutes, most recently Rijskmuseum (2023), NEXUS at MoCA Taipei (2023), Document 2022 at Rijksmuseum Amsterdam (2022), Mi Pais at Stedelijk Museum Schiedam (2020), and MAMMON at Museum for Fine Arts Split, Croatia (2018). She has been a guest lecturer at the University of Sint-Maarten, Art Institute Ateliers ’89 in Aruba, MBO Scholengemeenschap in Bonaire, and a guest lecturer at the University of Curaçao. Currently, she is a PhD candidate at the University of Amsterdam. In addition to her practice, she founded Uniarte, an artist-run foundation that promotes the visibility and development of artists in the Dutch Caribbean.