Teresita Fernández: Fire (United States of the Americas)

Teresita Fernández (born Miami, 1968; lives in Brooklyn, New York) creates work that is characterized by self-reflection and conceptual wayfinding. Her immersive, monumental works are inspired by a radical rethinking of landscape informed by diverse historical and cultural references. Often using images from the natural world, Fernández’s work emphasizes what she refers to as “stacked landscapes,” or the overlapping and often omitted connections between places and people. Transforming materials such as charcoal, gold, graphite, and iron ore, she is interested in revealing loaded ties to colonization and the inherent history of violence that is embedded in the landscape. Her practice engages in a subtle unraveling of land, power, visibility, and erasure.

Fernández is a 2005 MacArthur Foundation Fellow and the recipient of numerous awards including a Guggenheim Fellowship, an NEA Artist’s Grant, and a Louis Comfort Tiffany Biennial Award. Appointed by President Barack Obama, she is the first Latina to serve on the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts, a 100-year-old federal panel that advises the President and Congress on national matters of design and aesthetics. Fernández’s works have been exhibited both nationally and internationally at the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the Smithsonian Museum of American Art; MASS MoCA; and Castello di Rivoli, Turin, Italy, among others. Her mid-career retrospective, Elemental, was recently on view at the Pérez Art Museum, Miami (2019), and Phoenix Art Museum (2020).

Fernández’s work is included in the collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; the Pérez Art Museum, Miami; and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. She has created public art commissions for the Brooklyn Academy of Music (2021); the New Orleans Museum of Art (2019); the Ford Foundation (2019); and Madison Square Park (2015). Fernández received a BFA from Florida International University, Miami, in 1990, and an MFA from Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, in 1992.