Fidencio Fifield-Perez, "Barn Quilt."
Opening this weekend at Craft Alliance, the exhibit Fidencio Fifield-Perez: Little Cuttings offers an intimate, personal look at immigration and the concept of home.
Although artist Fidencio Fifield-Perez has spent most of the past decade in the Midwest, he was born in Oaxaca, Mexico, and migrated with his family to North Carolina at a young age. His work reflects his experience as a Latino immigrant in America and explores the concept of home. His mixed-media art is inspired by everyday life, whether it's seeing barn quilts while driving through the Iowa countryside or recreating a childhood bed through the textures of a salmon-colored weaving. (You might recognize Fifield-Perez's work from Cherokee Street, including at Bridge Bread and Flowers and Weeds, as well as the Luminary’s recent show Counterpublic.)
The road to the exhibition began more than a year and a half ago, when Craft Alliance curator Stefanie Kirkland met Fifield-Perez through a colleague at the University of Missouri. After a studio visit, Kirkland knew she wanted to showcase Fifield-Perez's work.
“I always want artists to continue their narration and push their boundaries with the material,” Kirkland says. “Fidencio is using papers and fibers in a whole other way.”
For Kirkland, a major goal is to get visitors to Craft Alliance to think about craft in a new way. Traditionally, craft deals with the tactile and material arts, anything from woodcarvings and metallurgy to weavings and quilts. In Fifield-Perez's work, he transforms traditional weaving and paper craft into something reminiscent of his own story and the more refined high arts.
"I completely accept the craft label," he says, "but hopefully I also give you something that is slightly minimal or more modern or conceptually profound.
“Being brought up in a family where labor has dignity, I still have a lot of love and respect for craft or things that are laborious,” he continues, "because I am fully aware that my family is still making a living through the labor that they put out with their hands."
Image courtesy of Craft Alliance
Along with some new pieces, Fifield-Perez plans to highlight his series Dacaments, a collection of lifelike plant portraits painted onto pieces of mail that he had to keep to prove his residency in the United States. Fifield-Perez says he was inspired by votive paintings in Mexico, also known as ex votos, paintings of religious gratitude often commissioned to give thanks for a miracle.
"I love them so much," he says. "The envelopes, for me, are completely a response to those ex votos, which are so crafty and have deep history in Mexico." According to Fifield-Perez, the collection of envelopes signifies the anticipation that he felt while waiting for important notices from the government.
Kirkland says Fifield-Perez’s art has a universal, though-provoking theme. "His work is about longing for home and our sense of ‘What is home?’ and ‘What is place?’" she says. "Hopefully, it will be a landing place for conversation and a point of contemplation."
"Fidencio Fifield-Perez: Little Cuttings" runs August 30–October 27, beginning with an opening reception at 6 p.m. August 30.
