A true interdisciplinarian, Fernandes weaves together performance, sculpture, photography, installation and more in his ongoing examination of intersectional culture, highlighting queer communion, cultural dissonance, and the contemporary concerns of marginalized communities. Fernandes employs choreography as an instrument of embodiment and radical visibility. His photography documents and distills these performances into dynamic evidence of action and movement.
In Duet, sculptures commissioned by The Fabric Workshop and Museum and the Pulitzer Arts Foundation become both backdrop and performer, as two dancers interact with the fabric works. The performers are obscured and revealed by a set of curtains or supported by cushions fabricated to appear as stone. These works respond to the multifarious practice of sculptor and performer Scott Burton. Burton’s performances were composed in restrained tableaus that explored the agency of touch, one such being scored against a curtained backdrop, and later, his use of granite and rock in sculptural furnishings mediated the movement of the body in space, all of which Fernandes considers here.
The lens of the medium-format camera generates a voyeuristic grit, capturing moments of intimate embrace and desire-fueled tension. Both a devotion to the import of community and a reminder of the surveillance of the body, the movements and curtains reference the practice of “cruising,” a nonverbal communication method by which queer intimacy is sought and discovered. The curtains are printed with seemingly innocuous smudges, yet their placement echoes the act of swiping on dating apps, a gestural reference to the contemporary version of the form.
Fernandes interprets Burton’s performative navigation of body language and queer liberation by inciting the corporeal to blend with the architectural, referencing to the way the body, and thus the self, move through and are shaped by its environment. In the images, concrete walls and floors are directly contrasted by the plush cushions and tactile curtains, and the intentional use of shadow and light is wielded as shapers of space and atmosphere.
Hard and soft, seen and unseen, Fernandes posits a fluid liminality in his work, reflective of his own experiences and those in his community.
