Image courtesy of Creativity Explored and the artist Ana Teresa Fernández.
Please note: This event has been canceled due to coronavirus-related measures. Track scheduling updates here: sfai.edu/coronavirus.
As part of SFAI’s Visiting Artists + Scholars Lecture Series, Ana Teresa Fernández will discuss her recent collaboration with over 50 artists with developmental disabilities from Creativity Explored. Hear Fernández and Creativity Explored artists and teachers describe their art-making process—and the inspiration behind Of Here From There | De Aquí Desde Allá, their new immersive installation.
Fernández, who received her MFA in 2006 and taught at SFAI, facilitated more than 15 art-making workshops in 2019 at Creativity Explored as a visiting artist-in-residence, exploring ideas of movement, migration, home, and place with CE artists.
In the process, she became increasingly interested in their individual visual vocabularies and intricate mark-making practices. The result of this extensive collaborative process is Of Here From There | De Aquí Desde Allá, on view through April 26 in the Main Gallery at SFAI—Fort Mason Campus.
Of Here From There | De Aquí Desde Allá is generously supported by Kenneth Rainin Foundation, Grants for the Arts, National Endowment for the Arts, Koret Foundation and California Arts Council.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Ana Teresa Fernández, born in 1981 in Tampico, Mexico, lives and works in San Francisco. Her work explores the politics of intersectionality through time-based actions and social gestures, translated into masterful oil paintings, installations, and videos. Within her work, performance becomes a tool for investigation as strong feminist undercurrents flow together with post-colonial rhetoric. Through her work, the artist illuminates the psychological and physical barriers that define gender, race, and class in Western society and the global south.
Fernández has exhibited at the Denver Art Museum, Denver, CO, the Nevada Museum of Art, Reno, NV, Arizona State University Art Museum, Phoenix, AZ, the Grunwald Gallery at Indiana University, Bloomington, IN, Humboldt State University, Eureka, CA; the Tijuana Biennial, Tijuana, Mexico; Snite Museum at Notre Dame University, Notre Dame, IN; Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco, CA and The Oakland Art Museum, Oakland, CA.
Her work has been collected by institutions such the Denver Art Museum, the Nevada Museum of Art, and Kadist Art Foundation. The Headlands Center for the Arts granted Fernández the Tournesol Award in 2008 and her films have been screened at festivals internationally including, but not limited to, MADRID International Film Festival, Madrid, Spain, Claremont Film Festival, Claremont-Ferrand, France, the International Frauen Film Festival, Dortmund, Germany, the Female Eye Film Festival, Toronto, Canada, the San Diego Latino Film Festival, San Diego, CA, and the Honolulu Film Festival, Honolulu, HI. In 2018, Fernández’s solo exhibition for Gallery Wendi Norris’s offsite exhibition in Miami will travel to the Grunwald Gallery at Indiana University and be accompanied by a publication.
ABOUT CREATIVITY EXPLORED
Creativity Explored is San Francisco’s premier nonprofit art studio and gallery for artists with developmental disabilities.
Over 36 years, CE has facilitated the careers of hundreds of artists with developmental disabilities by offering space, support, and representation. The organization establishes these artists’ work as an emerging and increasingly important contribution to the contemporary art world. CE artists have seen their work exhibited in museums and galleries in 14 countries, and have earned nearly $2 million from their art. Each year, over 10,000 people visit its studios in the Mission District, which are often described as energizing, magical, and joyful.
