On Saturday March 23, 2013, College of Architecture + The Arts (CARTA) alumna Teresita Fernández will receive a Distinguished Alumni Award at the 12th annual Torch Awards Gala. The Distinguished Alumni Awards recognize alumni who have brought honor and distinction to the university through their notable record of service and achievement in a particular discipline, organization or cause.
Fernández was born in Miami and currently lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. She graduated from FIU with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in 1990. She is the recipient of a 2005 MacArthur Fellowship, a Louis Comfort Tiffany Biennial Award, an American Academy in Rome Fellowship, and a National Endowment for the Arts Artist’s Grant. In 2011, President Obama appointed Fernández to serve on the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts, a federal panel that advises the president, Congress and governmental agencies on national matters of design and aesthetics.
Fernández is best known for her prominent public sculptures and unconventional use of materials. Her work is characterized by an interest in perception and the natural world. Diverse in materials and wide-ranging conceptually, Fernández creates experiential, large-scale works that are often inspired by landscape and place as well as diverse historical and cultural references. She has had numerous major solo exhibitions including the Corcoran Gallery, Washington DC; ICA, Philadelphia; Castello di Rivoli, Turin; Museo de Arte Contemporaneo, Malaga; Miami Art Museum, Miami; Site Santa-Fe; and the USF Contemporary Art Museum, Tampa.
According to USF Contemporary Art Museum curator David Norr,”the idea that one must turn away from nature in order to see it is a loaded concern at the crux of Fernández’ new works. Nature, for Fernández, is a fabrication of culture where cinematic illusions, industrial design and lasting ephemeral experience intertwine—collapsing artifice and nature into prismatic experience.”
To read more about the Torch Awards, visit https://fiualumni.com/torch2013.
