Q+Art is an interview series featuring the artists behind our First Friday Exhibitions. Today, we're talking with Houston-based photographer Julia Emily Fisher, whose work is featured in our January 2026 exhibition, Lone Star: New Takes on the 28th State.
Julia Fisher makes work about the in-between. Growing up in the suburban “bubble” of Kingwood, Texas, the daughter of Brazilian immigrants found herself constantly negotiating two worlds. Her series Entre os Lados (Between the Sides) explores the space between those two worlds.
In the series, Julia reaches for the textures of her childhood: the smell of pão de queijo, or Brazilian cheese bread, the blur of smiling faces at birthday parties, the small misunderstandings that come from living between cultures. She gathers these fragments—personal totems, flashes of Brazil’s saturated greens and yellows—and layers them, one over the other, until the images feel as patchwork and uncertain as memory itself. “I use collaging and colorful tableaus in an attempt to reconstruct childhood memories while acknowledging discrepancies, lapses in memory, and the reality of my physical distance, being thousands of miles away,” she says.
Now at the University of Houston, Julia moves through a city alive with languages and faces from everywhere, a place that feels a world away from the quiet, orderly streets of her childhood. Here, she finds herself drawn to the question that lingers at the edge of every photograph: What does it mean to visit your family’s country and feel like a tourist?
In Today’s Q+Art…
Julia discusses holding onto her heritage in a Texas suburb, the strange dislocation of feeling her American self surface during family visits to Brazil, and the slow, surprising discovery of Houston’s patchwork of cultures after years of feeling isolated.
How has Texas shaped your work, and what aspects of the state's identity do you find most compelling beyond the usual stereotypes?
Julia Fisher: Growing up specifically in Kingwood, TX, a town on the outskirts of Houston, as a child of immigrant parents gave me a skeptical view of Texas. Kingwood’s own inhabitants labeled the town as the “bubble,” a suburb full of cookie-cutter American homes and families. This suburban culture deeply influenced my series, Entre os Lados, particularly the inner turmoil of trying to assimilate into southern suburban culture, while preserving my Brazilian heritage.
After moving to downtown Houston for university, my world shifted. I had heard about the diversity of Houston, but was finally experiencing its richness firsthand. I think with age and travel, I have come to appreciate and acknowledge the constant hospitality and authenticity of its people. I value the landscape, the vastness, the food, and the strength of our communities.
What impact has your upbringing and cultural background had on your work, and how has it influenced your approach and aesthetic?
JF: Brazilian culture is lively, to say the least. Brazilians are open and unapologetically themselves, traits that contrasted from the conservative town I was raised in. In my work, I touch on memories where these contrasting cultures intersected. Moments where I visited my family in Brazil, I reflected on how my American upbringing was seeping into those experiences.
Aesthetically, I take inspiration from Brazil’s colorful and lush landscape in combination with my mother’s colorful approach to decorating our lives.
What are the advantages and challenges of building an art practice in Texas compared to coastal art hubs, and how does regional identity influence how your work is received?
JF: I think the art scene is thriving and continuously growing in Houston. Are the opportunities as expansive as some of the art hubs? Maybe not. However, I suppose I am used to sharing my work locally, where many of the perspectives I explore are part of a shared lived reality.
While Texas residents endure the wrath of its own policies, today, I increasingly see parallels reflected on a federal scale, which reminds me that we are not completely alone. I enjoy creating work and sharing it within Houston’s diverse community, where there is a mutual understanding that we are enduring and navigating this reality together.
What advice do you wish you could give your younger artistic self?
JF: I would advise myself to obviously keep creating. To keep digging, questioning, and remaining curious, and to look for inspiration in every crevice and seam of this universe.
View Lone Star: New Takes on the 28th State
Our January 2026 First Friday Exhibition includes work by Julia Fisher.
Exhibition | Curator’s Statement | First Friday Exhibitions
Follow Julia Fisher
This interview has been edited for length and clarity. All photos published with permission of Julia Fisher; featured artwork: “Parabéns.”