Growing up in Mexico, Ana Teresa Fernandez learned at an early age about the double standards imposed on women and their sexuality. Through performance-based paintings, Fernandez explores 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 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.

Born
Tampico, Mexico

Education
2006 M.F.A., San Francisco Art Institute, San Francisco, CA
2004 B.F.A., San Francisco Art Institute, San Francisco, CA
2001 Alliance Française II Diplome, Ècole Brillantmont, Laussane, Switzerland