Claudia Martínez Garay: Every Seed is awakened

This exhibition of new and existing works marks Claudia Martínez Garay’s first major solo exhibition in Scotland. Claudia Martínez Garay is a Peruvian artist who lives and works between Amsterdam (NL) and Lima (PE). Her practice encompasses painting, sculpture, printmaking, video, and site-specific installation. The artist’s sculptural works frequently reference pre-Columbian aesthetics, particularly artefacts from the Incan civilisation. These sculptures are combined in larger installations in dialogue with symbolic elements derived from her research. Martínez Garay is interested in how artefacts, cultural relics, and propaganda communicate the history and social-political memory of cultures. Multiple interpretations of historical figures and artefacts are incorporated into the artist’s work, supplanting institutional narratives and notions of stewardship. The artist seeks to challenge the persistence of colonialist frameworks and official narratives informing our understanding of the pre-Columbian cultures. The fractured forms in her work signal stories and identities that have been obscured through a process of erosion, both metaphorical and literal. Martínez Garay re-animates the existing fragments of lost histories, underscoring the connections between that which can be salvaged and continued. 

Martínez Garay’s has simultaneously a solo exhibition at Nottingham Contemporary Art (UK), on view 25 May – 8 September 2024. A presentation of her work will also be shown at GRIMM, London (UK) in October.

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