Ana Teresa Fernandez
UNTITLED, 2010
20” x 22”, Edition of 50

Ana Teresa Fernandez creates performance-based paintings, which explore the territories that encompass these different boundaries and stereotypes; physical, emotional, and psychological. Fernandez subverts the typical folkloric representations of Mexican women by changing the protagonist’s uniform to the quintessential little black dress, a symbol of the American prosperity and femininity and of the Mexican tradition of wearing black for a year after a death.  Her paintings portray actual performances where Fernandez takes on the Sisyphean task of cleaning the environment – sweeping sand on a beach, vacuuming a dirt road – to accentuate the idea of disposable labor resources.  Ana Teresa Fernandez received her Masters of Fine Art from the San Francisco Art Institute.