Memory is in Progress, 2015-17

Memory is in Progress is a collection of paintings, newspaper clippings, documents and images that relate to the various exhumation processes of the mass graves from the Spanish Civil War and the Franco Regime. The paintings emerge from this collection and are composed of fragments and records of a growing personal archive. The surface of the canvas records impressions of the news as it gets reported in both Spain and internationally; at the same the paintings become layered with translations of in-the-field drawings of a landscape where history and memory is in constantly in progress. Beginning in 2015, in collaboration with Spain’s Association for Recuperation of Historic Memory, Fernández has been translating the news she receives as mass graves are exhumed in her native country of Spain. From identity objects, to letters, to visitor books from the exhumation sites, the layered images found on the paintings represent various stages of recovery that occur both in the archeological dig and though personal memories that bring the missing bodies of the past into the present. The archive and paintings have been re-organized and added to since 2015. Memory is in Progress was exhibited at Los Angeles Contemporary Archive in 2016 and Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery in 2017.