Claudia Martínez Garay

Claudia Martínez Garay is a Peruvian artist who lives and works between Amsterdam (NL) and Lima (PE). Martínez Garay’s practice encompasses painting, sculpture, printmaking, video, and site-specific installation. Her sculptural works most often reference pre-Columbian aesthetics, particularly artifacts from the Incan civilization. These sculptures are combined in larger installations in dialogue with symbolic elements derived from her research. 

Martínez Garay is interested in how artifacts, cultural relics, and propaganda communicate the history and social-political memory of cultures. Multiple interpretations of historical figures and artifacts 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.

Courtesy of GRIMM