On Thursday, Oct. 22, the Cleveland Museum of Art (CMA) commissioned acclaimed artist Teresita Fernández to create “Soil Horizon (Cleveland),” a site-specific installation with two large-scale glazed ceramic wall murals in the Jane and Jon Outcalt Family Concourse, connecting the museum’s Horace Kelley Art Foundation North Lobby with the Ames Family Atrium.

Artist Teresita FernándezFernández’s work is characterized by an expansive rethinking of what constitutes landscape and will be on view beginning in February 2027.

The commission completes the transformation of CMA’s Horace Kelley Art Foundation North Lobby and adjoining spaces, undertaken in 2024 to enhance the visitor experience while respecting the distinctive architecture of Modernist architect and designer Marcel Breuer.

In her design, Fernández envisioned the CMA concourse as a space where a new work of art will welcome visitors, provide a memorable artistic experience, and help transition guests from the everyday world into the encyclopedic collections of the CMA’s galleries.

Fernández’s “Soil Horizon (Cleveland)” will be the first artwork that visitors encounter at the museum.

“’Soil Horizon (Cleveland)’Friday reflects Teresita Fernández’s remarkable ability to respond to site, place, and architecture through her artwork,” said CMA curator of contemporary art Nadiah Rivera Fellah in a statement. “The work’s imagery is inspired by landscapes and vistas native to Ohio, and by the museum’s collection, while its luminous, ethereal quality offers a compelling counterpoint to the weight and heaviness of Breuer’s architecture.”

About the installation
“Soil Horizon (Cleveland)” consists of thousands of tiny square ceramic tesserae that glimmer and transform as visitors move through the two floor-to-ceiling panels.

The Outcalt Family Concourse at the Cleveland Museum of Art.The work’s title refers to a geological term describing the horizontal layers that make up the earth—from bedrock to the topmost layer of soil.

As Fernández describes it: “Each layer, or ‘horizon,’ has its own characteristics and like a portrait of a place, demarcates the chronology of the land it constitutes while metaphorically suggesting what is buried, what is in transition, and what is yet to emerge.”

Fernández has spent more than three decades unraveling the intimacies between matter, humans, and locations.

Through monumental public art, site-specific sculptural installations, film, and works on paper that are materially and historically driven, Fernández’s work questions and expands conventional notions of site and landscape.

Fernández as an artist
Fernández’s work is characterized by an expansive rethinking of what constitutes landscape—from the subterranean to the cosmic; from national borders to the more exclusive psychic landscapes we carry within.

Her luminous, sculptural works challenge conventional ideas about land and landscape, exploring the profound emotional connections between how we imagine places and how we see one another.

Cleveland Museum of Art had lived up to Jeptha H. Wade II's words, 'for the benefit of all the people forever.'Through her installations, she exposes the complex narratives that stem from distorted, colonial histories—elaborating on these themes in subtle ways that insist on intertwining beauty, the socio-political, the intimate, and the immense—imagining the landscape with reciprocal sentience.

“You look at the landscape, but the landscape also looks back at you,” Fernández has said.

A 2005 MacArthur Foundation Fellow, Fernández lives and works in Brooklyn, New York, and has won many honors, fellowships, and awards. Her work has been exhibited and collected both nationally and internationally.

In conjunction with the unveiling of “Soil Horizon (Cleveland)” in February 2027, CMA will host The Fran and Warren Rupp Contemporary Artists Lecture: Teresita Fernández on Friday, Feb. 19, from 6 p.m. to 7 p.m. in the Gartner Auditorium, Suzanne and Paul Westlake Performing Arts Center. Reception to follow. The event is free, but a ticket is required.