Emily Karaka is a Maori painter. Her tribal affiliation is Ngai Tai, Waishu, Ngati Hine, Ngati Wai. Largely self-taught, she acknowledged the encouragement of such artists as Arnold Manaaki Wilson, Colin McCahon and Ralph Hotere.

Emily exhibited regularly after her first one-woman show at the Outreach Gallery in Auckland in 1980. Her work, which shows a highly personal and expressive style, is often political and drawn from both Maori and European art traditions.

Many of the figures in her painting recall carvings from the whare whakairo (Maori meeting houses). She used bright colours, often applied with fast expressionistic strokes, and texts (predominantly Maori) to address viewers to the political and cultural issues affecting society. She wished to 'bring into the chamber-vaults of reflection, the mirrored stories of the cost, changes, growth, life and death of our society'.

She was one of the women artists who brought a new force to the Maori art movement in the 1980s.