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The Armory Show Platform: Teresita Fernández

The Javits Center

Sep 7–10, 2023

Detail of wall sculpture by Teresita Fernández

The Javits Center

The Armory Show, Platform
Rewriting Histories
Curated by Eva Respini
September 7-10, 2023

Lehmann Maupin is pleased to announce Teresita Fernández’s inclusion in Rewriting Histories, the Armory Show’s Platform presentation, on view at the Javits Center from September 7–10, 2023. Curated by Eva Respini, Rewriting Histories brings together large-scale works and site-specific installations by artists who challenge accepted beliefs surrounding history, art, and culture. The presentation will feature Fernández’s Island Universe 2 (2023), a large-scale, charcoal wall installation that elegantly combines all of the Earth’s landmasses, fusing them into one continuous, borderless terrain. “The artists included in Rewriting Histories explore complex histories often tied to colonialism, land, and power” states Respini. “Teresita Fernández’s monumental Island Universe 2 re-images global territories, visualizing the interconnected geological, cultural, and historical relationships of geographies. Made of charcoal, this installation illustrates so well Fernández’s interest in uncovering what she refers to as ‘stacked landscapes’—the conceptual framework that allows her work to reveal the often invisible, buried layers of historical violence embedded in land.” 

Wall sculpture by Teresita Fernández

Teresita Fernández

Archipelago(Garland), 2020

Wall sculpture by Teresita Fernández

Teresita Fernández

Dark Earth(Electric Sky), 2023

Wall sculpture by Teresita Fernández

Teresita Fernández

Archipelago(Smoke), 2020

Wall sculpture by Teresita Fernández

Teresita Fernández

Island Universe 2, 2023

Portrait of Teresita Fernández

Teresita Fernández's work is characterized by an expansive rethinking of what constitutes landscape: from the subterranean to the cosmic, from national borders to the more elusive psychic landscapes we carry within. Fernández unravels the intimacies between matter, human beings, and locations. Her luminous, sculptural works poetically challenge ideas about land and landscape by amplifying the powerful, emotional connection in how we imagine place, and, by extension, one another. Fernández exposes the complex narratives that stem from distorted, colonial histories, elaborating on these themes in subtle ways that insist on intertwining beauty, the socio-political, the intimate, and the immense. Imagining the landscape with reciprocal sentience, Fernández has said “You look at the landscape, but the landscape also looks back at you."

Fernández is a 2005 MacArthur Foundation Fellow and the recipient of numerous awards, including a Creative Capital Award; Guggenheim Fellowship; the Louis Comfort Tiffany Biennial Award; an American Academy of Rome Fellowship (AFAAR); and a National Endowment for the Arts Individual Artist’s Grant in Visual Arts, among others. Her works have been exhibited and collected both nationally and internationally including: The Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Whitney Museum of American Art; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; The Menil Collection; Philadelphia Museum of Art; Pérez Art Museum Miami; Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth; Centro de Arte Contemporáneo de Málaga, Spain; The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; SITE Santa Fe; The Smithsonian Museum of American Art; MASS MoCA; and Castello di Rivoli, Italy, among others. She lives and works in Brooklyn, New York

Learn about the artist
The Armory Show Platform: Teresita Fernández | Lehmann Maupin