Ana Fernandez

Lives and works in Madrid, Spain

Artist statement

My art practice began in my country of birth (Spain), and was rooted in drawing. As I moved to the US in my teens, it expanded and currently encompasses painting, printmaking, papermaking, textiles and digital collage. It reflects a tactile sensibility and an affinity for layering, patterning and ornamentation. Originally, it focused on the interaction among the female body, advertising, and fashion, and it viewed the female body as a repository of cultural and psychological experiences. I was interested in how fashion and female display are implicated in the construction of a female identity, along with political and social messages regarding popular perceptions of female beauty. My visual vocabulary included motifs referencing struggle, renewal, joy, and a fascination with beauty, biology, myth, and belief. Over time my interest shifted towards the formal relationships between clothing and the female body, considering the body and the layers wrapping it – skin and garment – as a meditation on identity & self. The garment was a “second skin” that simultaneously hides and reveals, or alternatively a carcass that echoes the body in its absence. I incorporated imagery that relates to both body and garment, sometimes conceiving the two as one, intermingling them into a single organism: the body as self / the garment as self. Recently I have become invested in representing the female body in a different way altogether. No longer concerned by its outer shell, I am inspired...

Artwork