(AT HOME) ON ART AND ECO- TRAUMA: ARTIST TALK WITH TERESITA FERNÁNDEZ
Description:
Cuban-American artist Teresita Fernández, who is based in New York, creates immersive, sculptural installations and monumental public projects defined by a rethinking of landscape that emphasizes the connection between place and material. Using gold, malachite, graphite, ironore, and other minerals that have loaded ties to colonization, she exposes the hidden histories of violence embedded in the landscape. Her subtle, conceptual practice is characterized by a quiet unraveling of site, power, visibility, and erasure in which she layers diverse cultural references to unearth what she calls “stacked landscapes.” In her recent show Maelstrom, at Lehmann Maupin, Fernández created works that unapologetically visualize the enduring violence and devastation ignited by colonization. Focusing on the Caribbean archipelago—the first point of colonial contact in the Americas—the works in the show challenge viewers to consider a more nuanced reading of people and place, one that looks beyond dominant, continental narratives and instead considers the region as emblematic of an expansive and decentralized state of mind. The artist conjures images of catastrophic weather and natural disasters as metaphors for centuries of injustice, US military intervention, ecological destruction, and systemic oppression as a means of reflecting on the sociopolitical turmoil and abandon to which the region and its populations have been (and continue to be) subjected. Fernández joins Hirshhorn associate curator Marina Isgro to discuss how she brings together concepts, materials, rigorous research, and evocative imagery.
