Unicorns at UMass Dartmouth
Gallery Director Vierra Levitt, Sapar Contemporary Director Nina Levant and Emma Kathleen Hepburn Ferrer. Photos by Kat Sheridan
Emma Kathleen Hepburn Ferrer presenting her lecture on the show. 
"The Annunciation of the Horse."
Two of Emma Kathleen Hepburn Ferrer’s pieces. 
"St Sebastian."
"The Unicorn Carriage."
Gallery Director Vierra Levitt, Sapar Contemporary Director Nina Levant and Emma Kathleen Hepburn Ferrer. Photos by Kat Sheridan
Emma Kathleen Hepburn Ferrer presenting her lecture on the show.
"The Annunciation of the Horse."
Two of Emma Kathleen Hepburn Ferrer’s pieces.
"St Sebastian."
"The Unicorn Carriage."
The UMass Dartmouth College of Visual and Performing Arts Campus Gallery welcomed Emma Kathleen Hepburn Ferrer’s exhibit “The Unicorn, and Other Creatures of Hope.” Ferrer is the granddaughter of Audrey Hepburn, and this is her second show and her first show in the United States.
After Ferrer’s previous show, “The Scapegoat” she was looking for a new theme. When she saw the tapestry art piece “The Hunt of the Unicorn,” by an unknown artist, she knew she wanted to continue the idea of “The Scapegoat” with unicorns.
“There’s this opportunity to show your work and coming to an environment of other learners, and it’s really about the work and the ideas behind it,” she said.
The show consists of the physical multimedia pieces and a video that she describes as a “peek into my subconscious.” During the opening, she explained her inspiration and the history behind the pieces.
She has been working on this show for nine months. In the show, she combines mythology and reality with her multimedia pieces, with creatures like unicorns, lambs and horses.
She describes unicorns and scapegoats as opposite sides of the same coin. Scapegoats, historically, had a town's sins projected onto it and then left to die so that the town could be purified. The unicorn had ideas of hope and purity projected onto it.
“Where before in my work there was melancholy, now there is mystery,” Ferrer said, “Where before there was tragedy, now there is a glimmer of hope.”
The theme included many references to Christian mythology and pieces of art history, such as “The Annunciation of the Horse” as a call to the annunciation of the Virgin Mary.
Ferrer was especially inspired by the idea of how unicorns are depicted in myths and art, and artistic depictions of those hunting the unicorns would put them in cages. Many of the pieces in this show center on the idea of being caged.
“Who is on the inside of the cage, who is on the outside of the cage?” she asks, “If we put this being that we supposedly love, supposed to be beautiful, inside a cage, are we inside the cage?”
The show will be at the UMass College of Visual and Performing Arts Campus Gallery, located at 285 Old Westport Road. It will be visible until January 14, 2026 during regular hours.
