Teresita Fernández Wayfinding

This visually arresting book provides the first complete overview of artist Teresita Fernández’s multi-faceted body of work. Teresita Fernández creates elaborate installations that pull viewers into other worlds and environments, playing with scale, material and how we understand and navigate the landscape. The idea of wayfinding—moving from place to place or even getting lost—is critical to understanding Fernández’s approach, which incorporates unconventional materials such as graphite, pyrite, dyed thread, polycarbonate tubes, gold and malachite to explore how we look at and process our surroundings from land to sky, private to public. This book is a journey designed as constellation of works rather than a chronological retrospective, inviting readers to explore Fernández’s oeuvre through large, full-color illustrations; writings on place; references to literature, film, art history, and poetry, alongside Fernández’s own writings; and critical essays. Organized into six sections—landscape, celestial, terrestrial, subterranean, cinematic, and radiance— which reflect themes recurring in Fernández’s practice, this volume spans her full career. The result is a dramatically rich experience of getting to know an artist through her creative process—a rewarding journey that will satisfy general readers and scholars alike.

Denise Markonish is Curator at MASS MoCA in North Adams, Massachusetts.