Teresita Fernández (born 1968) is a New York-based visual artist best known for her public sculptures and unconventional use of materials. Her work is characterized by an interest in perception and the psychology of looking. Her experiential, large-scale works are often inspired by landscape and natural phenomena as well as diverse historical and cultural references. Her sculptures present spectacular optical illusions and evoke natural phenomena, land formations, and water in its infinite forms. She is a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship (2003), and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation "Genius Grant" (2005). She served as a presidential appointee to

Barack Obama Barack Hussein Obama II ( ; born August 4, 1961) is an American politician who served as the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, Obama was the first African-American president of the ...

U.S. Commission of Fine Arts The U.S. Commission of Fine Arts (CFA) is an independent agency of the federal government of the United States, and was established in 1910. The CFA has review (but not approval) authority over the "design and aesthetics" of all construction with ...

, distinguishing her the first Latina to serve in that role.

Early life and education

Fernández was born in

Miami Miami ( ), officially the City of Miami, known as "the 305", "The Magic City", and "Gateway to the Americas", is a coastal metropolis and the county seat of Miami-Dade County in South Florida, United States. With a population of 442,241 at ...

Florida Florida is a state located in the Southeastern region of the United States. Florida is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the northwest by Alabama, to the north by Georgia, to the east by the Bahamas and Atlantic Ocean, and to ...

to Cuban parents in exile. Her family left Cuba in July 1959, six months after the

Cuban Revolution The Cuban Revolution ( es, Revolución Cubana) was carried out after the 1952 Cuban coup d'état which placed Fulgencio Batista as head of state and the failed mass strike in opposition that followed. After failing to contest Batista in co ...

. As a child, she spent much of her time creating in the

atelier An atelier () is the private workshop or studio of a professional artist in the fine or decorative arts or an architect, where a principal master and a number of assistants, students, and apprentices can work together producing fine art or ...

of her great aunts and grandmother, all of whom had been trained as highly skilled couture

seamstress A dressmaker, also known as a seamstress, is a person who makes custom clothing for women, such as dresses, blouses, and evening gowns. Dressmakers were historically known as mantua-makers, and are also known as a modiste or fabrician. Not ...

es in

Havana Havana (; Spanish: ''La Habana'' ) is the capital and largest city of Cuba. The heart of the La Habana Province, Havana is the country's main port and commercial center.

Cuba Cuba ( , ), officially the Republic of Cuba ( es, República de Cuba, links=no ), is an island country comprising the island of Cuba, as well as Isla de la Juventud and several minor archipelagos. Cuba is located where the northern Caribbea ...

. In 1986, Fernández graduated from

Southwest Miami High School Southwest Miami Senior High School (coloquially known as simply "Southwest"), is a co-educational secondary school in Olympia Heights, a census-designated place in Miami-Dade County, Florida, United States. Southwest is currently a 'A’ schoo ...

. She received a Bachelor of Fine Arts from

Florida International University Florida International University (FIU) is a public research university with its main campus in Miami-Dade County. Founded in 1965, the school opened its doors to students in 1972. FIU has grown to become the third-largest university in Florid ...

in 1990, and a Masters of Fine Art from

Virginia Commonwealth University Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) is a public research university in Richmond, Virginia. VCU was founded in 1838 as the medical department of Hampden–Sydney College, becoming the Medical College of Virginia in 1854. In 1968, the Virginia ...

in 1992.

Career

In 2009 the

Blanton Museum of Art The Jack S. Blanton Museum of Art (often referred to as the Blanton or the BMA) at the University of Texas at Austin is one of the largest university art museums in the U.S. with 189,340 square feet devoted to temporary exhibitions, permanent col ...

at the

University of Texas at Austin The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin, UT, or Texas) is a public research university in Austin, Texas. It was founded in 1883 and is the oldest institution in the University of Texas System. With 40,916 undergraduate students, 11,07 ...

commissioned the large permanent work titled ''Stacked Waters'' that occupies the museum's Rapoport Atrium. ''Stacked Waters'' consists of 3,100 square feet of custom-cast acrylic that covers the walls in a striped pattern. The work's title alludes to artist

Donald Judd Donald Clarence Judd (June 3, 1928February 12, 1994) was an American artist associated with minimalism (a term he nonetheless stridently disavowed).Tate Modern websit"Tate Modern Past Exhibitions Donald Judd" Retrieved on February 19, 2009. In ...

's "stacked" sculptures—series of identical boxes installed vertically along wall surfaces—as well as to his sculptural explorations of box interiors. Fernández noticed how The Blanton's atrium functions like a box, and given its architectural nods to the arches of Roman baths and cisterns, she sought to fill its spatial volume with an illusion of water. Also in 2009, Fernández had a piece called "Starfield" made up of mirrored glass cubes on anodized aluminum in the AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas. In 2013, Fernández was featured in a contemporary art installation at Cornell Fine Arts Museum's Alfond Inn in

Winter Park, FL Winter Park is a city in Orange County, Florida, United States. The population was 30,183 according to the 2022 census population estimate. It is part of the Orlando–Kissimmee–Sanford, Florida Metropolitan Statistical Area. Winter Park was f ...

. The work displayed was titled "Nocturnal (Cobalt Panorama)". On June 1, 2015, "Fata Morgana", her largest public art project to date opened in New York's

Madison Square Park Madison Square is a public square formed by the intersection of Fifth Avenue and Broadway at 23rd Street in the New York City borough of Manhattan. The square was named for Founding Father James Madison, fourth President of the United States ...

. The

Madison Square Park Conservancy Madison Square is a public square formed by the intersection of Fifth Avenue and Broadway at 23rd Street in the New York City borough of Manhattan. The square was named for Founding Father James Madison, fourth President of the United States ...

presented the outdoor sculpture consisting of 500 running feet of golden, mirror-polished discs that create canopies above the pathways around the park's central Oval Lawn. Seattle cloud cover 0468

In 2017, Fernández, in collaboration with Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros, created a site-specific installation called "OVERLOOK: Teresita Fernández confronts Frederic Church at Olana" at

Olana State Historic Site Olana State Historic Site is a historic house museum and landscape in Greenport, New York, near the city of Hudson. The estate was home to Frederic Edwin Church (1826–1900), one of the major figures in the Hudson River School of landscape pa ...

. As part of the work, Fernández juxtaposes the works of landscape artists like

Frederic Church Frederic Edwin Church (May 4, 1826 – April 7, 1900) was an American landscape painter born in Hartford, Connecticut. He was a central figure in the Hudson River School of American landscape painters, best known for painting large landscapes, ...

, Marianne North, Martin Johnson Heade, among others, with images of indigenous people and their fellow travellers in order to examine and illustrate the context of the world that made up their images.

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of high ...

Committee on the Arts commissioned ''Autumn (... Nothing Personal)'' a public art project by Fernández in 2018. In 2019, the

Pérez Art Museum Miami The Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM)—officially known as the Jorge M. Pérez Art Museum of Miami-Dade County—is a contemporary art museum that relocated in 2013 to the Museum Park in Downtown Miami, Florida. Founded in 1984 as the Center for t ...

and Phoenix Art Museum, in Fernández home state of Florida, organized ''Teresita Fernández:'' ''Elemental'' the artist's first mid-career retrospective presenting artworks spanning the 1990s to the present. The exhibition featured sculptures, installations, and several other mixed media works to comment on social, geological, and political issues. The publication accompanying the show was published by PAMM with

Phoenix Art Museum The Phoenix Art Museum is the largest museum for visual art in the southwest United States. Located in Phoenix, Arizona, the museum is . It displays international exhibitions alongside its comprehensive collection of more than 18,000 works of ...

Advocacy for the arts

Fernández is well known for advocating for Latinx artists and in 2016 she partnered with the

Ford Foundation The Ford Foundation is an American private foundation with the stated goal of advancing human welfare. Created in 1936 by Edsel Ford and his father Henry Ford, it was originally funded by a US$25,000 gift from Edsel Ford. By 1947, after the death ...

to organize the U.S. Latinx Arts Futures Symposium, a landmark gathering of Latinx artists with museum directors, curators, scholars, educators, demographers, and funders from across the country to confront the omission of Latina, Latino, and Latinx artists from U.S. arts institutions. Partnering with the

in 2016, Fernández helped found and create the U.S. Latinx Arts Futures Symposium. The symposium was organized to create a dialogue on how to more broadly represent Latino art across the full spectrum of creative disciplines. In her opening address for the U.S. Latinx Arts Futures Symposium, Fernández indicated that her the event was meant to create an intersection between "the powerful and the voiceless." Her work has created space in the artworld for Latina artists and her advocacy has cleared a path for emerging Latinx artists. One direct result of the U.S. Latinx Arts Futures Symposium's was the

Whitney Museum of American Art The Whitney Museum of American Art, known informally as "The Whitney", is an art museum in the Meatpacking District and West Village neighborhoods of Manhattan in New York City. It was founded in 1930 by Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney (1875–194 ...

hire of the museum's first

curator A curator (from la, cura, meaning "to take care") is a manager or overseer. When working with cultural organizations, a curator is typically a "collections curator" or an "exhibitions curator", and has multifaceted tasks dependent on the parti ...

specializing in

Latinx ''Latinx'' is a neologism in American English which is used to refer to people of Latin American cultural or ethnic identity in the United States. The gender-neutral suffix replaces the ending of ''Latino'' and ''Latina'' that are typical o ...

art.

Awards

* 1994:

CINTAS Cintas Corporation () is an American corporation headquartered in Mason, Ohio which provides a range of products and services to businesses including uniforms, mats, mops, cleaning and restroom supplies, first aid and safety products, fire e ...

Fellowship * 1995: Metro-Dade Cultural Consortium Grant (Miami, FL) * 1999:

Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation The Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation was founded in 1918 by Louis Comfort Tiffany to operate his estate, Laurelton Hall, in Cold Spring Harbor, Long Island. It was designed to be a summer retreat for artists and craftspeople. In 1946 the estate ...

Biennial Award * 2003: Guggenheim Fellowship (New York, NY) * 2005: MacArthur Fellows Program * 2013: Aspen Art Museum Aspen Award for Art (Aspen, CO) * 2016: Art in General Visionary Artist Honoree (New York, NY)

Exhibitions

* 1995: "Real/More Real", Museum of Contemporary Art (Miami, FL) * 1997:

Corcoran Gallery of Art The Corcoran Gallery of Art was an art museum in Washington, D.C., United States, that is now the location of the Corcoran School of the Arts and Design, a part of the George Washington University. Overview The Corcoran School of the Arts & Design ...

(Washington, DC) * 1998: Artpace (San Antonio, TX) * 1999: Institute of Contemporary Art (Philadelphia, PA) * 2000: "supernova." Berkeley Art Museum/Matrix (Berkeley, CA) * 2000: Site Santa-Fe(Santa Fe, NM) * 2001: Castello di Rivoli (Turin, Italy) * 2002: Miami Art Museum (Miami, FL) * 2003: Grand Arts (Kansas City, MO) * 2005: Centro de Arte Contemporáneo de Málaga (Málaga, Spain) * 2005: Fabric Workshop and Museum (Philadelphia, PA) * 2009: "Blind Landscape." Contemporary Art Museum, University of South Florida, (Tampa, FL); Blanton Museum of Art (Austin, TX) * 2011: "Blind Landscape."

Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland A museum ( ; plural museums or, rarely, musea) is a building or institution that cares for and displays a collection of artifacts and other objects of artistic, cultural, historical, or scientific importance. Many public museums make thes ...

(Cleveland, OH) * 2011: "Focus: Teresita Fernández." Modern Art Museum (Fort Worth, TX) * 2011: "Pivot Points V." Museum of Contemporary Art (Miami, FL) * 2014: Golden Panorama, Aspen Art Museum (Elk Camp, Aspen, CO) * 2014:

Kyoto University of Art and Design is a private university in Sakyo-ku, Kyoto, Kyoto, Japan. The predecessor of the school was founded in 1934. It was chartered as a junior college in 1977 and became a four-year college in 1991, known as the Kyoto University of Art and Design ...

(Kyoto, Japan) * 2015-2016: "Fata Morgana."

(New York, NY) * 2017: "OVERLOOK: Teresita Fernández confronts Frederic Church at Olana. A collaboration with the Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros."

( Columbia County, New York) * 2018: Autumn (Nothing Personal…), Harvard University (Boston, MA) * 2019 New Orleans Museum of Art Commission (New Orleans, LA) * 2019-2022: "Ruby City" Linda Pace Foundation Collection (San Antonio, TX) * 2019-2020: "Teresita Fernández: Elemental."

(Miami, FL) * 2020: "Teresita Fernández: Elemental." Phoenix Art Museum (Phoenix, AZ) * 2020-2021: "Maelstrom" Lehmann Maupin Gallery (New York, NY)

Early life and education

Career

Advocacy for the arts

Awards

Exhibitions

References

Further reading