M HKA Ensembles

Video, 00:49:05.

Collection: Courtesy of the artist and RYAN LEE Gallery, New York.

(°1989, Berkeley, CA) lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.

American artist Martine Gutierrez received her BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2012. The Brooklyn-based performance artist draws from eclectic media, acting as subject, artist, and muse, documenting her personal metamorphosis into various imagined roles.

“Society perpetuates rigid constructs - fabricated dichotomies like ‘male’ vs. ‘female’, ‘gay’ vs. ‘straight’, ‘minority’ vs. ‘white’, ‘reality’ vs. ‘fantasy’, ‘dominate’ vs. ‘submissive’, etc.,” Gutierrez says. “But our interpretation of these constructs is subjective and not immutable. Reality, like gender, is ambiguous because it exist fluidly.” “I think of each work as a documentation of a transformative performance. I am interested in every facet of what it means to be ‘genuine’, especially when performing in a role society would never cast me in. I stage the scene and emote, but the viewer sees what they want to see; they can actively engage with the work or passively make assumptions. While gender is inherently a theme in my work, I don’t see it as a boundary. The only profound boundaries are those we impose upon ourselves.”

Martine Part I-IX is Gutierrez’s semi-autobiographical meditation on personal transformation. Begun while she was an undergraduate student at the Rhode Island School of Design, the episodic work follows the eponymous character from Providence to New York via Central America and the Caribbean. As she journeys toward self-discovery, Martine negotiates the permanent and the fleeting communing with urban architecture and natural elements such as sand, water, and air. As she moves from place to place, Martine attempts to gather, transport, and preserve these untamable elements, connecting her personal quest with larger questions of who we are in the world and the relationship between humans and the planet we live on. Through her interactions with elements that are enduring and timeless yet constantly in flux, Martine attempts to hold on to particular moments and sensations as she continues on her journey toward a future self.

http://www.martinegutierrez.com/