The solo work of New Orleans native artist Cecelia Fernandes, who's works in the collaboration C+J, has been part of several group shows including Politico Pop Up, New Orleans Art Center, 2015, 2016; Louisiana Photography Biennial, 2016; Room With A View, Contemporary Arts Center, New Orleans, 2016; and the 2015 and current 2017 Louisiana Contemporary, Ogden Museum exhibition. She completed her first residency at the Joan Mitchell Center New Orleans in 2018.
Her first solo exhibition which takes the form of an instillation, “The Birth of All Things” is comprised of over a dozen works, including a smaller instillation within the larger entitled “Closeted” and several sculptural pieces. In this space she takes aim at historical origins and contemporary pressure points that structure and fertilize the grounds of our present day social woes. Our past and present collide in a slow, soft motion to speculate at a distant future.
“This new series ‘Pinned,’ is the most personal work that I have ever created. As a Native of New Orleans, 6th generation, my life is rooted in the Black Creole community and its public rituals. They formed me and gave me a strong sense of self and of the power of my cultural history.
As working studies for possible larger pieces, this work is deeply connected to my return to New Orleans and the state of things presently found here. I wanted to find a place of comfort, just as I had in 1997 when I returned from my first stay aboard. The city had virtually remained just as I had left it, but this time around, in 2013, I came back to find a considerably different city.
In Pinned, seemingly unconnected images collide to form a woven tapestry representative of the dynamic nature of the conflict between the individual and societal structures of control.
The photographic body of work that I use as a raw material, comes from the many years my husband, the photographer Jose Fernandes and I have amassed, capturing the experience of community and daily life in Europe, Caribbean, and in the United States. Photography allows me to use the most accurate representation of the subject in context, as an individual and as a symbol of a shared universal culture.”
The joinery of the two images, forming woven diptychs, expresses the convergence of intersecting lines that on the surface appear not connected but in truth are completely interdependent of either existence. The lines collide and implode moving between spaces of dense abstract and thinly sliced narratives of floating imagery. The paper is of a delicate nature, of ready accessibility, and easily manipulated. The pins represent fixing of the individual while the loose compositions talk about the morphing of power structures. Together they tell the ambiguous tale of human existence and the nature of the unseen hand of Fate, super natural or man made.
Cecelia is a 8th generation New Orleanian visual artist whose perspective reflect her experience growing up in the city's Creole community. She studied painting and sculpture at the University of New Orleans and after Hurricane Katrina she lived five years between Lisbon and Rome, where she studied videography. She lived an additional 5 years in New York, completing her education at The New School for Social Science before returning home to New Orleans in 2013.
As a co-owner and creative director of Eight One Eight Contemporary Photography Gallery on Royal Street in the heart of the French Quarter, Cecelia promotes the documentary photography of her husband Jose Fernandes as well as their joint work as C+J, which has received critic’s attention while participating in several museum shows, most recently The Contemporary Arts Center 2018 show Constructing the Break, along with the Ogden Museum of Southern Art, and New Orleans Museum of Art.
Recent Exhibitions
2019
Retro Active, Gallery The Front, New Orleans
PhotoNoLa, New Orleans
2018
New Surroundings, PhotoNoLa, New Orleans
Constructing the Break, Contemporary Arts Center Museum, New Orleans
The Rent Is Too Damn High!, Crescent City Boxing Gym, New Orleans
Politico Pop Up 3, Art Space 3116, New Orleans
2017
Insentient Objects, Prospect 4 Satellite, New Orleans
Louisiana Contemporary, Ogden Museum, New Orleans
Bywater Biennial, Group show, New Orleans Art Center, New Orleans
3rd edition of Atelier Aberto—New Orleans, Atelier Aberto, São Paulo, Brazil
2016
REVOLT--Transmissions from the social-political battlefield, Solo show, Photo Nola, Eight One Eight, New Orleans
Politico Pop Up 2016, Photo Nola, New Orleans Center for Art, New Orleans
Louisiana Photography Biennial, New Orleans Art Center
A Building with a View, CAC Museum, New Orleans
Unveiled, group show, Hyphen Gallery, New Orleans
2015 Group Shows
Politico Pop Up 2015, Photo Nola, New Orleans Center for Art, New Orleans
Louisiana Contemporary, Ogden Museum, New Orleans
FLAG, Sculpture for New Orleans, New Orleans
Que Bola Asere, New Orleans Photo Alliance, New Orleans
X: The Variable of Progress M-Studio, New Orleans
2014
Prospect 3+, Imago Mundi, Luciano Benetton Collection, New Orleans Museum of Art, New Orleans.
