Graduate Lecture Series: Ana Teresa Fernández
June 06, 2023
Ana Teresa Fernández is an artist of fluencies. A student of linguistics, she speaks five languages. An artist of border erasure, she elevates the intersectionality of place, person, and politics to create a common human vernacular. Time-based actions and social gestures are her syntax. Land, history, gender, climate, and culture are her subjects. Performance, video, photography, painting, and sculpture become her dynamic tools of grammar. Through enacted narratives, she reveals all that too often gets lost in translation, becoming the literal embodiment of the stories that divide but also bind us as human beings sharing a planet of great fragility and beauty. Asked to characterize her work, Fernandez gives it the novel label Magical Non-fiction, explaining:
“Where unimaginable conditions are the reality, I seek to portray dreamscapes of what’s possible. The courage to transform is up to us.”
Born in Tampico, Mexico, Fernandez grew up in California and makes her home in San Francisco. She has created residencies and public work in Haiti, Brazil, Spain, South Africa, Cuba, Mexico & throughout the United States. Major public projects include On The Horizon, which was featured in the 2021 Lands End exhibition, organized by the FOR-SITE Foundation.
In one highly visible work, she erased the border between Tijuana & San Diego by painting a portion sky blue while wearing a tango dress and heels to create an illusion of a hole on the wall from afar. Collaboration is also a core value of Fernández’s practice, reflected in projects such as SOMOS VISIBLES with Arleene Correa Valencia and Truth Farm with Guadalupe Garcia, Correa Valencia, and Ronald Rael. In the latter, she installed a 120-foot-long table that spelled Truth across the lawn of the Trump winery, for all to see.
Jun 14, 2023 Thursday 6:00 PM – 8:00 PM
PNCA Campus - Arlene and Harold Schnitzer Center for Art and Design Shipley Collins Mediatheque 511 NW Broadway Portland, OR 97209