Fernández, born in 1968 in Miami, Florida, is, in the broadest sense, a landscape artist. But her work across three decades has been a rigorous consideration and poetic probing of the nature of landscape. Fundamentally a sculptor, she not only explores landscapes as visual phenomena, but uses the substances found within them to sculpt with—from graphite to iron ore, gold and pyrite. So they are her subject and her material.
Drawn Waters(Borrowdale), 2009
Courtesy the artist and Lehmann Maupin, New York, Seoul, and London
Beginning with profound research, Teresita reflects on land in relation to geography and geology, but also as a cultural space, with intimate connection to people and communities. Inevitably, then, this is a study of power, in which the history and violence of colonisation looms large.
But the landscape is also a metaphor for the territories within us. And in her works, whether they are vast sculptural or ceramic reliefs, room-scale installations or reflective canopies covering huge areas of public space, the viewer navigates this productive tension between the objective and subjective.
Island Universe, 2019
Courtesy the artist and Lehmann Maupin, New York, Seoul, and London
She discusses the early significance of Wilfredo Lam, and his influence on her major public sculpture Fata Morgana (2015). She also reflects on her admiration for artists whose writings are central to their practice, including Eva Hesse and Jack Whitten, and her deep engagement and critical response to Robert Smithson.
She talks about her pivotal experiences in Japan and the influence of historic Asian art on her thinking. She talks about her friendship with and admiration for Cecilia Vicuña and the importance of the writings of José Martí and Sylvia Wynter, among others. Plus, she gives insight into her life in the studio and answers our usual questions, including the ultimate: what is art for?
Astral Sea 1, 2024
Courtesy the artist and Lehmann Maupin, New York, Seoul, and London. Photo by Studio Kukla
- Teresita Fernández: Liquid Horizon, Lehmann Maupin, Seoul, 27 August-25 October
- Teresita Fernández/Robert Smithson, Radius Books, published 16 October, $60, £42.99 (hb)
This podcast is sponsored by Bloomberg Connects, the arts and culture platform.
Bloomberg Connects offers access to a vast range of international cultural organisations through a single click, with new guides being added regularly. They include a number of institutions in the US that have shown and collected the work of Teresita Fernández, including the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, known as MASS MoCA, in North Adams, and SITE Santa Fe in New Mexico. The guide to SITE Santa Fe features extensive content on the latest SITE Santa Fe International exhibition, curated by the former artistic director of the Venice Biennale, Cecilia Alemani. You can watch an introduction to the exhibition by Alemani and one of her collaborators on the exhibition, Estevan Rael-Gálvez, the executive director of Native Bound Unbound: Archive of Indigenous Slavery. This 12th edition of the International extends beyond SITE Santa Fe itself to various atmospheric partner venues across the city and you can plot a journey through the exhibition by exploring these different locations and the works within them.