Teresita Fernández:Elemental is the first major traveling exhibition of Teresita Fernández’s formally evocative and conceptually rigorous body of work. Bringing together over fifty installations, monumental sculptures, and paintings from the mid-1990s to the present, the exhibition establishes the Miami-born artist of Cuban descent as one of the most innovative of her generation and one of the most important Latinx artists in the United States. Featured works included Untitled (1997), a mirrored floor sculpture that references voyeurism but encourages self-reflection from those within the structure, and Fire (2005), which uses thousands of hand-dyed silk threads to construct flame patterns that become animated by light and air as viewers move around the sculpture. The exhibition also showcased the artist’s most recent body of work, in which she contrasts the sublime nature of traditional landscapes with the current politically charged climate of the United States. Both Fire (America) 5 (2017) and Charred Landscape (America) (2017) underscore Fernández’s reinterpretation of depictions of the land, presenting a contemporary American landscape marred by violence, climate change, and warring ideologies that stands in stark contrast to the idealized vision of the American dream.
Teresita Fernández: Elemental
“The Warhol Foundation aims to support the full range of artistic activity in America—from exhibitions at major museums to neighborhood projects by artist collectives. Arts writers, through the range and specialization of their individual interests, touch upon all of this activity—illuminating and interrogating it and bringing it into conversation with the public. Support for artists is not complete without support for the circulation and serious consideration of their ideas. The Arts Writers Grant program keeps artists at the center of cultural dialogue and debate—in our opinion, right where they belong.”
Joel Wachs, President