Celebrating Latinx Heritage Month at Mizzou

 Material Traditions: 

The Work of Fidencio Fifield-Perez



Fidencio Fifield-Perez, Portrait Patrol 2, 2019, acrylic and ink on hand cut, found maps.
Courtesy of the artist. 

In celebration of National Hispanic Heritage Month and in coordination with Latinx Heritage Month at the University of Missouri, the Missouri Student Unions is proud to announce its annual exhibition, Celebrating Latinx Heritage at Mizzou. National Hispanic Heritage Month is observed annually from September 15th to October 15th. What began as Hispanic Heritage Week in 1968 expanded to National Hispanic Heritage Month under President Ronald Reagan in 1988. This month honors and celebrates the cultures, traditions, and heritages of all Latin American countries. Celebrating Latinx Heritage at Mizzou recognizes MU faculty, alumni, visitors, and campus organizations who are a part of the Latinx community, including the work of MU Art Professor, Fidencio Fifield-Perez.

Material Traditions: The Work of Fidencio Fifield-Perez addresses the rigidity and permeability of artistic, physical, and psychological borders through the materials Fifield-Perez works with and the artistic traditions he references. Whether painting or working with imported paper and found maps as seen in Portrait Patrol 2 (2019), the materials directly reference or allude to Fifield-Perez's personal experiences as well as the complex intersections of multiple social identities. In Fifield-Perez's woven prints, such as Some Strange Rain (2021), he interrogates the conception of of edges--or limits--by weaving multilayered concentric squares into a single surface and referencing the quiet and often unrecognized physical labor required to produce the traditional Oaxacan crafts. 

Fidencio Fifield-Perez, Some Strange Rain, 2021, intaglio ink on rives lightweight.
Courtesy of the artist.

Fifield-Perez was born in Oaxaca, Mexico and migrated to the United States with his family at the age of seven. He earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree at Memphis College of Art in 2013 and a Master of Arts and Master of Fine Arts at the University of Iowa in 2014 and 2015, respectively. In January 2018, Fifield-Perez joined the School of Visual Studies at the University of Missouri. He has gained a national artistic reputation since the start of his artistic career, with over fifteen solo exhibitions and more than forty group exhibitions. A majority of his works can be found in public collections, including the Marianna Kistler Beach Museum of Art, the Cleveland Museum of Art, and the Bernard A. Zuckerman Museum. This semester, Fifield-Perez is on research leave as he was awarded the 2021 Eliza Moore Fellowship for Artistic Excellence by the Oak Spring Garden Foundation, annually granted to an outstanding, early-career artist who is developing new work. 

If you would like to know more about Fifield-Perez and his work come to the MU Student Center and see Material Traditions and read or listen to any of the following links:


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