Marta Perez-Garcia
Marta Perez Garcia
I am a printmaker by training. I have also worked extensively with mix media.
My work is centered on finding ways to bridge art, civic engagement and social justice.
In recent years, I've turned to structural handmade paper
Artists Statement
I work at the intersection of art, civic engagement, and social justice. By telling the story of women bodies, and the violence they endure, I expose how gender-based violence has become an integral part of society, insidiously permeating our daily lives. In the words of Rita Segato, wars are waged on women bodies, as part of a “pedagogy of cruelty” that deactivate channels of empathy, assert ownership over all objects (women included), and destroy community. My work is the expression of a long-held commitment to solidarity, empathy, and memory, as a vehicle to denounce the many ways in which the “war on women” takes place, especially in domestic settings. My creative process has grown from colorful and dramatic printmaking to paper-making of stylized sculptures. Along the way, I understood that I had to listen to the stories of women and trauma to allow for art to embody the violence as well as the healing, for putting the pain into an impactful and relatable form.
"La immortalized del cangrejo" (2014) 108" x 53"
Printing Process
My prints are made through the woodcarving “reduction” process. I flesh out a wooden board to give life and density to the figures I print on paper. In the woodcut reduction process, I draw a sketch directly on a wooden board and then, I successively carve out the wood, apply one color at a time to the board, and print that color on paper, and then carve again. Each carving corresponds to the printing of one color. When all the colors from the sketch on the board have been printed, the piece is done. By then most of the board’s wood has been carved out.
In a way, the reduction process is in itself a metaphor for the violence and frailty of life as the demise of the carved wood gradually makes way for bright pigment on paper to mark the birth of the print. The passage from the tri-dimensional piece of wood to the bi-dimensional paper is the journey that my pieces and I engage in, and that I wish to share with the public.
NiP-NiS, La Fleur de l'Age, 2007, (55 x 42.5)
Installations and Community Involvement
Over the years my work has focused on gender violence and on the blindness of society to it. In an effort to raise awareness, I have turned to large multimedia installations involving local organizations, communities and arts institutions. These installationsand the workshops that lead to them contribute to giving a voice, a stage and a presence to survivors of gender violence who have lived and continue to live in silence. These projects seek to foster a cathartic and empowering dialogue so that, through art, the community goes from being a silent witness to becoming an active healer.
