Ana Teresa Fernandez

Ana Teresa Fernandez is an artist who creates art with deep meaning behind them. Most of her work is related to social standards in gender, gender standards in media, and social justice. Ana Teresa Fernandez was born in Tampico, Mexico but now lives in the Bay Area in San Fransico.

Ana Teresa Fernandez art work consists of paintings and sculptures. Her paintings look like photographs from far, but once you look at it closer, you will soon realize that it is actually a painting. She mainly uses cool neutral colors for a few, but some of her paintings use dark colors.

 Some of her paintings consists of social standards/ media standards in relation to gender. In her work Telaraña (The white painting), she points out that artist and media try to portray clean, and pleasing looking pictures of women. She points out that nature is beautiful, and sometimes nature and or something that is natural is not alway clean. She uses these paintings in order to create a sense of discomfort for some people in order to let them know that not everything is clean cut. In her other painting Ablution (The blue painting), informs us that society demands a certain type of women. In her painting she is swimming in water, which can indicate cleansing and purity in which some or all society demands a woman to be.  Lastly in her social justice art work, Erasure (Black painting), can point out that some people are left in the dark, and the struggles that are unheard by the government. She mentioned that this piece was inspired by the people who have disappeared in Mexico, and never herd from ever again. She points out that regardless of who kidnaped the people, it showed the lack of response by the government and how some people are simply forgotten by the government.  

I enjoy Ana Teresa Fernandez's work because it relates to social justice and how society expect women to act. The piece that resonated with me the most is the Telaraña. The title of the piece Telaraña (spider web) makes sense because spider webs are beautiful from far away, or by photographs. But in reality, they are sticky and come from a spiders behind. We portray women as being these beautiful and clean living beings, but in reality like spider webs, it is not always perfect and clean. Another reason why I loved her meaning behind her art work is because she talks about her struggles having 2 different cultures. This stuck to me because like most women, I do not fit into the mold of a perfect women. I also have 2 different cultures and used to struggle with trying to balance them. It took me a while to realize that it was nearly impossible to balance 2 cultures evenly.