The great-granddaughter of a woman who immigrated to California from Mexico, Fernandez has spent her career creating documentary and conceptual work that explores history, labor, gender, migration, and identity. In her Multiple Exposures series, the artist inserts herself into the history of Mexican image making. She combines self-portraits with rephotographed images from books by Mexican photographers and cinematographers including Gabriel Figueroa, Nacho López, and, as in this image, Manuel Álvarez Bravo. The doubling of the figure here collapses time, location, and history, paying tribute to the lineage of Mexican women from which Fernandez descends in contemplative poses that emphasize their shared self-sufficiency and resiliency. She also explores what she has called “embrace and separation”: The selection of iconic images honors these canonical Mexican artists while her slightly “off” poses, which respond to but don’t perfectly mimic the original images, allow the artist her own creative space.

—Text taken from the Carter Handbook (2023)