Lehmann Maupin is pleased to announce Fire (America), an exhibition of new works by Teresita Fernández. The exhibition will debut a 16-foot glazed ceramic wall panel depicting a nocturnal landscape engulfed in flames, as well as a new series of abstract landscapes made from burned paper. In addition, Fernández will create an immersive, 100-foot panoramic drawing on site comprised of built-up, dimensional layers of solid charcoal applied directly to the gallery’s walls. Titled Charred Landscape (America), the installation will circumnavigate the gallery, surrounding visitors, and dissolving into the white walls.

Fernández is best known for her immersive installations and public projects that explore the various historical and psychological implications of the genre of landscape. In the Fire (America) series, Fernández uses images of fire to refer to contemporary American violence, as well as the technique of slash and burn used by indigenous people throughout the Americas to shape and cultivate the land. Contrary to the common fictitious narrative that the New World was a wilderness at the time of European contact, the technique of slash and burn evidences the sophisticated, deliberate ways that indigenous people had altered the land to their benefit for thousands of years. Fernández seeks to revise our notion of the “American landscape” and who gets to define it, as well as how notions of violence are defined. She is interested in visualizing erased, warped, and invisible narratives that are often omitted or deliberately obscured in our perception of what we think of as “American.”