Teresita Fernández, Rising(Lynched Land), 2020

Teresita Fernández
b. 1968, Miami, FL

Rising(Lynched Land), 2020
Copper, wood, burlap, and rope
Gift of Marshall Field’s by exchange; restricted gift of Jacques and Natasha Gelman Foundation and Moss Family Foundation

Taking the 1990s as its cultural backdrop, Forecast Form: Art in the Caribbean Diaspora, 1990s–Today was the first major group exhibition in the United States to envision a new approach to contemporary art in the Caribbean diaspora, foregrounding forms that reveal new modes of thinking about identity and place. The exhibition, which ran from November 19, 2022, through April 23, 2023, used the concept of weather and its constantly changing forms as a metaphor to analyze artistic practices connected to the Caribbean, understanding the region as a bellwether for our rapidly shifting times.

Gathering works from artists with connections to the global Caribbean diaspora, Forecast Form presented this monumental work by the artist Teresita Fernández (b. 1968, Miami, FL; lives in New York, NY). In an accompanying wall label, exhibition curator Carla Acevedo-Yates describes the work, which entered the MCA Collection in 2023:

In Rising(Lynched Land), the palm tree, a symbol associated with the Caribbean’s tourist economies, is suspended from the ceiling with a rope, appearing as a lynched body. It is a painful yet powerful metaphor for the histories of colonialism, violence, and environmental pillage that connect the Caribbean landscape to the colonially oppressed body. The work takes on one of the most circulated symbols of Caribbeanness, which contrary to popular belief is not native to the region, to allude to the histories of destruction and redemption embedded within its form.

—Carla Acevedo-Yates, former Marilyn and Larry Fields Curator