Teresita Fernandez

Teresita Fernandez was born in 1968 in Miami, Florida, to Cuban parents who had left Cuba in exile. She earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Florida International University in 1990 and a Master of Fine Arts from Virginia Commonwealth University in 1992. She now lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.

Fernandez works across sculpture, installation, and mixed-media panels, often using materials such as graphite, ceramic, and cut metal to construct landscape-like forms that address perception, colonial history, and the politics of land. Her early recognition included a Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Biennial Award and an affiliated fellowship at the American Academy in Rome, both in 1999, followed by a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2003 and a MacArthur Fellowship in 2005. In 2011, President Barack Obama appointed her to the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts as its first Latina member. Her 2014 to 2015 exhibition As Above So Below was a large-scale solo exhibition at MASS MoCA. She has continued to exhibit internationally, including a 2013 solo show in Hong Kong that marked her first solo exhibition in China, and more recent gallery presentations such as Soil Horizon (2024) and Scorched Earth (Lament) (2025) at Lehmann Maupin.

Fernandez has been recognized consistently by major institutions rather than through a body of widely quoted critical writing available for citation here. Her honors, from the Guggenheim and MacArthur fellowships to her election as a National Academician in 2017 and her 2021 Meridian Cultural Diplomacy Award and Creative Capital Award, point to sustained institutional regard for work that treats landscape and natural materials as carriers of historical and political content. Her inclusion in the permanent collections of museums including the Whitney Museum of American Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Walker Art Center, and the Saint Louis Art Museum reflects a critical consensus that places her among the more institutionally embedded American sculptors of her generation.

Fernandez is represented by Lehmann Maupin, and her practice has been sustained primarily by museum acquisitions, public commissions, and institutional honors rather than by a heavily tracked auction history. As of this writing, a reliable, well-documented all-time auction record for the artist could not be confirmed from public sources, and no specific price should be treated as established. Collectors should approach any single auction result for Fernandez with caution and verify current figures directly with a specialist or an auction house before relying on them.

There is no published catalogue raisonne for Fernandez, and her market is thinner and less transparent than her museum standing might suggest. Her career has been built on public commissions, museum surveys, and federal and foundation honors, which support long-term institutional value but do not translate directly into a liquid or well-benchmarked secondary market. Anyone considering a work by Fernandez should verify provenance directly with Lehmann Maupin and should not assume that any single reported auction figure represents a verified record.