Souvenirs

This elaborate work from New Jersey-based artist Sandra C. Fernandez combines text from 16th-century Spanish writings on the Americas with antique crocheted fragments, waxed linen thread, red willow twigs, leather, silk threads, and inkjet photos on various handmade Japanese papers. The result is a nine-panel folded accordion book housed in a wooden box and resting on a crocheted hammock. This book reflects Fernandez’s broader work to consider transborder and cross-temporal experiences of displacement, memory, and identity. Through images of scars and stiches, and in our attempts to read text concealed behind layers of fabric and paper, Souvenirs challenges viewers to consider the struggles to overcome hardships of all kinds. The juxtaposition of these difficult visual elements cast alongside the delicate beauty of the surrounding threadwork and antique lace reminds us that life is a balance between beauty and pain, loss and joy.