A selection of work by artist Fidencio Fifield-Perez. Fifield-Perez received his BFA from Memphis College of Art and MFA from The University of Iowa. He is currently Assistant Professor of Painting at University of California-Davis. Born in Oaxaca, Mexico, but raised in the United States, Fifield-Perez’s work examines borders and the people who traverse them. His interdisciplinary practice centers around the materiality of paper ephemera, everyday self-documents discarded after having fulfilled their purpose. Fifield-Perez began collecting envelopes and other documents out of a need to report to USCIS about his entry into the United States in order to qualify for DACA. The precarious legality of existing between having or lacking status permeates his practice, which includes painting, print, and collage.
“Painted envelopes are configured into intimate portraits of the only home I have made for myself, moved across the country, and mourned for with the imminent threat of DACA’s repeal. The plant paintings are physical and metaphorical maps of personal and official correspondence. The rubber plant abandoned outside The University of Iowa’s art studios painted on the mailer envelope of my graduate degree; the split-leaf monstera gifted to my husband and me for our wedding ceremony; the jade plant given to me by the only other DACAmented professor I’ve met. They are hyper realistic depictions that foreground community relationships while simultaneously obscuring information deemed pertinent by the government….In updating one’s status or ID verification, you start to notice all the nuances of patterns, shifts in colors when new cards arrive in the mail. I’m interested in the slow gaze that occurs over a decade. Small changes become perceptible, offering some sort of agency throughout this process.”