Maria -Theresa Fernandes: Stories of Empathy and Place
April 30th through May 27th, 2023
The Intersection of Empathy and Place
Stories of Empathy and Place endeavors to reveal the personal ethnology of the artist Maria-Theresa Fernandes relative to her travels, migrations, and creative practice. More than mere travel journals, Fernandes’s work explores sociology, history, culture, and deeply personal transformations. The child of parents who immigrated from India to Kenya, Maria-Theresa is an artist whose imprint from the many nuances of adjustment and accommodation is firmly rooted in her DNA. Migration, whether decided or imposed, is a costly undertaking; with the promise of gain, there is always loss.
EMPATHY, and the lack thereof, impacts the consequence of relationships and encounters experienced by an artist who has made repeated adjustments to PLACE, re-working the composition of her life along the way. Each country or city that has inspired Fernandes’s work correlates unique memories of visual impact, relationships, and encounter.
As we begin to recover from universal vulnerability to an invisible nemesis, Stories of Empathy and Place proposes the message of EMPATHY as currency for addressing the pain of loss.
Michelle Talibah, Curator
Stories of Empathy and Place explores the prolific international career of Maria-Theresa Fernandes in a range of fiber-based media works, engaging stories of belonging and place. The exhibition is an abstract from the five decades of Fernandes’s use of fiber as a medium and includes works created between 1981 and 2023. Incorporating images, narratives, objects of metaphoric content, and various textile applications, the collection reflects the impact of place upon the artist’s depiction of life stories, re-told stitch by stitch.
The exhibition establishes Fernandes’s versatile use of materials, reveals the complexity of her process, and the evolution of her dexterity and talent. The presentation includes early works exploring subtleties, such as the landscape transition with seasons. In contrast, the subject matter of other works entails narratives relating to immigration and displacement, social justice, issues of feminine abuse, the artist’s alarm vis-à-vis the normalization of violence, and the concept of “walls” as constructs designed to impede passage and expressive freedom. The social justice content of her practice emerges as a rebuttal to indifference.
Widely traveled, Maria-Theresa has experienced immersion into various African, Asian, and Western cultures. The experience has afforded her a vast depository for inspiration and richly meaningful content to interpret a wide and contrasting array of life narratives. Informed by the imprint of displacement and change, the mature expression of Fernandes’s work is a distinct voice in diasporic commentary and the various perceptions of identity.
Born in Kenya to parents who immigrated from Goa, Western India, Fernandes grew up in a culturally pluralistic East African community. She migrated to London in 1965 to pursue her creative aspirations and began her formal art study at Sir John Cass College in London. She later studied at the Manchester College of Art, Manchester, England, where her resolute interest in fiber study began. She received a Master of Fine Arts in Fiber Arts degree from the Cranbrook Academy of Art in the United States.
Maria -Theresa Fernandes has exhibited internationally for more than 40 years. London debuts of her work include solo exhibitions at the Royal Northern College of Music, Manchester, and select galleries in London, Yorkshire, and Leeds, England, Asia, and throughout the United States. She is the recipient of numerous awards, including the UNESCO Arts International Award.
Opening Reception: April 30th, 3-6 P.M.
Your R. S. V. P. is appreciated at newdoorcreative@gmail.com
or 410 244 - 8244