Introduction
“The existing scholarship and criticism around Teresita Fernández’s work unpacks questions about landscape, place, colonization, the body, and wayfinding. Along these lines, the work has been placed in art history alongside predecessors such as Robert Smithson, Ana Mendieta, and Robert Morris. Many of these writings pay close attention to the nature of Fernández’s materials. They note the powerful relationship between graphite, gold, charcoal, and fire that Fernández intervenes in picturing landscapes, for instance. Yet far less attention has been given to the place of Fernández’s work in a line going back to the earliest known human marks, their makers, and their contexts, despite the affinity of their materials. There is room for more critical thinking around the non-art contexts invoked by her material choices, e.g., archaeology, geology and occultism. What does it mean for a contemporary artist to dedicate her practice to certain materials by choice that were also utilized by the earliest human artists by necessity and experimentation? How do Fernández’s experiments with rocks and mined matter to create images relate to theirs? What does unpacking this connection mean for art history? This interview is a first step in rectifying this absence in the conversation around Fernández’s work, and to address the persistent gap between archaeological and art historical concerns.”
Read the interview here.
IMAGE: Teresita Fernández, Viñales (Reclining Nude) (detail), 2015, Concrete, bronze, and malachite, 48 x 64 x 101 inches