Victoria Martinez

Bio: Victoria Martinez (b. Chicago, IL) is an artist who honors her Mexican-American ancestry through abstraction. Her work is inspired by murals, graffiti, ancient sites, architecture, and the urban environment. She has exhibited at venues including the Yale University Art Gallery, the National Museum of Mexican Art, the Logan Arts Center at the University of Chicago, Transmitter Gallery, and the Perrotin Gallery viewing salon. Her work has been supported by The Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library Research Fellowship at Yale University, the Actos de Confianza Grant through the National Association of Latino Arts and Cultures (NALAC), and a travel grant through the Theaster Gates Rebuild Foundation. Martinez holds a BFA from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design and an MFA from Yale University School of Art in Painting and Printmaking. Upcoming projects include a solo exhibition at The Chicago Cultural Center curated by Kristin Korolowicz and an exhibition through the Lit & Luz Festival at Museo Universitario del Chopo in Mexico City. Martinez is currently the inaugural artist selected through the Climate Engagement through Art in Cities fellowship and will be leading a mural with Yale University and the City of New Haven.

Artist Statement: With a background in public art, Victoria Martinez erects fiber-based paintings and large-scale installation art that produce conversations with ancient and modern architecture. Contesting fabric’s traditional associations with craft and the decorative, she transforms swaths of cloth into structural elements as a way of honoring her Mexican American heritage and landscapes. Attentive to the histories of place, she also creates portable works that bear indexical relationships with locations. Martinez builds tangible connections with her familial ancestry and investigates sites as repositories of cultural memory. Her practice also includes researching artists as she attempts to discover cross-cultural similarities through textile history and material exploration.

Social: @vikstir