Contemporary Jewish Museum 

Artist Talks

Teresita Fernandez

Published February 17, 2016

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A Video Talk At the Contemporary Jewish Museum on Teresita Fernandez and her practice.  She doesn’t believe there needs to be some special code or narrative to “read” contemporary art.  She tries to make work that is accessible to us simply because we are human and have experienced life. She reads, travels, and does a lot of research and files away information that she reads or sees. Like the way the landscape was framed during her residency in Japan, with the textures of the burnt wood on outside of houses etc. A work develops when she finds the right connections between things, develops a form of how to express this emotion or feeling. She said it is false that artists already know how to make everything. She doesn’t know what is being made and by what material until that form comes to her. Interesting to hear her talk about the different ways of she is informed in her work from reading, writing down ideas, or drawing. 

She speaks about the importance for her work to be experiential and having a connection between the tactile and the visual. Teresita is known for her large scale installations and using unconventional materials.

Every material she chooses to work with has a conceptual framework around it. Her Graphite works is an example of her unusual way of working with a material to make sculptural reliefs that is normally used for drawing. She has an obsessive relationship with her materials and that combined with the ideas surrounding her work make it beautiful.

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