Mark Martinez

Bio

Mark Anthony Martinez is a conceptual artist and curator based in his hometown of San Antonio, Texas. Martinez holds a BFA from the Pacific Northwest College of Art (2012) and an MFA from Portland State University (2014). Martinez has served as Visual Arts Director to the Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center (2015-2017), Gallery Manager for the Michael and Noemi Neidorff Gallery at Trinity University (2018) and, co-curator for the experimental pop-up space, Fake Gallery (2019). He’s also exhibited in group shows around the country, including; Co-Prosperity Sphere, Chicago, Il. (2014), The Open as part of the Nicholas Frank Public Library, Milwaukee, Wi. (2017), Mexic-Arte in Austin, TX. (2017) and, The Clemente Soto Velez Cultural and Educational Center Inc., New York, NY (2019).

Statement

My practice is a conceptual project spanning a multitude of media and tones revolving most broadly around themes of racial identity. Wherein, a majority of my works express my own relation (as a visibly brown individual) and adjacency to white identity vis-a-vis generational and cultural assimilation into the US project. In my art, I employ self-portraiture, text and oblique references to the white body as it exists as a disembodied ideal — challenging the western notion of white as “neutral.”