Fidencio Fifield-Perez
Site: Bridge Bread + Flowers & Weeds
For Counterpublic, Fidencio Fifield-Perez installs a series of paintings, sculpture and cut paper maps in Bridge Bread and Flowers & Weeds. The works focus on the authority given to paper objects over the people they document. Without state-issued identification, young undocumented immigrants rely on ephemera as evidence of their lives within the United States through Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA). As a past DACA recipient currently petitioning for citizenship, Fifield-Perez makes use of maps, envelopes, and seemingly everyday materials he has used to document his existence as a substrate for meditative paintings on rootlessness, diaspora, and displacement.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Fidencio Fifield-Perez was born in Oaxaca, Mexico, but raised in the U.S. His current work examines the debate over borders, edges, and the people who must traverse through them. In his work, Fifield-Perez manipulates paper surfaces, and maps to refer to the crafts and customs taught to him as a toddler in Oaxaca – ones used to celebrate festivals and to mourn the dead. For Fifield-Perez these techniques are a way to reconnect with a time and place no longer present.
Fifield-Perez received his BFA from Memphis College of Art (2013) and an MA & MFA from the University of Iowa (2015). Recent group exhibitions include the Smithsonian’s Art Intersections: Asian Latino Pop Up Gallery; Fresh Prints: The Nineties to Now at the Cleveland Museum of Art; DUMA Biennial and a solo exhibition at the Dubuque Museum of Art; The Annual at the Chicago Artist Coalition; Somewheres & Nowheres: New Prints 2014 at the International Print Center New York and Fronteras/Frontiers at the Beach Museum of Art (2017/2018).
