CLAUDIA MARTÍNEZ GARAY

Lives and works in Amsterdam (NL) and Lima (PE)

Claudia Martínez Garay is a Peruvian artist who lives and works between Amsterdam (NL) and Lima (PE). Martínez Gary’s practice encompasses painting, sculpture, printmaking, video, and site-specific installation. As well as interrogating European museum collections and histories, Martínez Garay also takes inspiration from her own Andean heritage, exploring historical images, propaganda, and sounds from her home country. Her sculptural works often reference pre-Columbian knowledge systems and are often 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 reanimates the existing fragments of lost histories, underscoring the connections between that which can be salvaged and continued.

The artist studied printmaking at the Pontificia Universidad Católica of Peru (PE) and was a resident at the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten in Amsterdam (NL) from 2016 to 2017.

Selected collections: AkzoNobel Art Foundation, Amsterdam (NL); AMC Art Collection, Amsterdam (NL); Fundación Studie e Richerche Benetton, Treviso (IT); Central Reserve Bank of Peru, Lima (PE); Cisnero Fontanals Art Foundation, Miami, FL (US); Denver Art Museum, CO (US); THE EKARD COLLECTION; Hochschild Collection, Lima (PE); ING Collection, Amsterdam (NL); Inhotim Institute, Brumadinho (BR); KADIST Collection, Paris (FR) and San Francisco, CA (US); KPMG Art Collection, Amsterdam (NL); Krannert Museum, Champaign, IL (US); LAM museum, Lisse (NL); LOOP Collection, MACBA Museu d’Art Contemporani, Barcelona (ES); Micromuseo al fondo hay sitio, Lima (PE); Museo de Arte de Lima, MALI (PE); Museu Olho Latino, Atibaia (BR); Museum Arnhem (NL); National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, VIC (AU): Pérez Art Museum, Miami, FL (US); Sifang Art Museum, Nanjing (CN); Tanoto Art Foundation (SP) among others.

Courtesy GRIMM