The beautiful and experiential installations of Teresita Fernández allude to landscapes — historical, geological, internal, all in a heady mix. Her “Island Universe,” for example, a stunning wall-sized mosaic composed of smokey chunks of charcoal at the Ford Foundation in New York, renders the seven continents as a horizontal daisy-chain of land masses. It suggests the ancient footpath of humankind, a time long before nations and borders.

“The history of land formation is also the history of migration,” said Ms. Fernández, 51, at her studio in Brooklyn, where the Miami-born, MacArthur award-winning artist has been based since 1998. Her work and career are now being celebrated in her first comprehensive survey exhibition at the Pérez ...