Teresita Fernández: Autumn (…Nothing Personal)

Harvard University Committee on the Arts presents a new public installation Autumn (…Nothing Personal) by Teresita Fernández.

Autumn (…Nothing Personal), which runs from August 27 through October 1, 2018 in Harvard’s historic Tercentenary Theatre, is one of the University’s most ambitious public art projects to date. Commissioned by the Harvard University Committee on the Arts, Teresita Fernández set out to “make a work that was almost camouflaged by the changing colors of autumn in the Yard. While the piece does not change or move, everything around it is in constant flux–leaves turning colors and falling, passers-by animating the scene, activating the work and site with performances and simple gestures of being in the space.” The project transforms an area on Harvard’s campus that is normally a place of transit into a space for public dialogue and discussion, gatherings, and performance.

The project is in part inspired by American novelist and social critic James Baldwin’s text, Nothing Personal, published in 1964 at the height of the civil rights movement. Baldwin’s essay, originally produced alongside images by the photographer Richard Avedon, explores the complexities and contradictions at the center of the American experience and offers a critique of a society that is disconnected, unjust, divisive, and violent through his personal reflections and perspectives. Yet Baldwin ends his work speaking of love, light, and trust.

“It is this conjunction that inspired my use of the vulnerable light of autumn as a metaphor for a nation still struggling so desperately with the same issues Baldwin so eloquently exposes,” explains Fernández. “The work considers the fleeting and somber quality of the autumn season and the almost imperceptibly slow unraveling and ever-shifting movement of people, places, and histories.”

Taking Baldwin’s Nothing Personal as inspiration, guide and reference point, the public art project aims to unfold both as physical site and unscripted conversation.

“Teresita Fernández is bringing to campus her rare capacity to reshape social space through sculpture,” Robin Kelsey, Burden Professor of Photographer and Dean of Arts and Humanities. “Her work will temporarily transform the Tercentenary Theater into a space of inclusion, reckoning, improvisation, and encounter. Like many at Harvard, I am eager to be a part of this experience.”

Autumn (…Nothing Personal) will feature dozens of collaborations, including public events led by organizations on campus such as Harvard’s Committee on Ethnicity, Migration, Rights, Harvard University Native American Program, Harvard Art Museums, American Repertory Theater (A.R.T.), and experimental performances by artists such as Josefina Báez, Jill Johnson, and Claire Chase. Volunteers are encouraged to read the Baldwin essay, lead a group discussion, or propose their own public performance as part of the installation throughout the month of September. Sign up online to join a group reading.

Appointed by President Barack Obama, Fernández was the first Latina to serve on the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts, a 100-year-old federal panel that advises the president and Congress on national matters of design and aesthetics. She is a 2005 MacArthur Foundation Fellow and the recipient of numerous awards including a Guggenheim Fellowship, an NEA Artist’s Grant, and a Louis Comfort Tiffany Biennial Award. Fernández’s works have been exhibited both nationally and internationally at MASS MoCA, North Adams, MA; Museum of Modern Art, New York; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; and the Smithsonian Museum of American Art, Washington, D.C. Fernández received a BFA from Florida International University, Miami, in 1990 and an MFA from Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, in 1992. She lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.

Autumn (…Nothing Personal) was made possible with the support of the Johnson/Kulukundis Family President’s Fund for Arts at Harvard University.