Following the opening of the exhibition Cassandra Complex, curator Adriana Blidaru will be in conversation with artist Claudia Martínez Garay for an open discussion about her practice, starting with the works that are on view at basis e.V. This dialogue will discuss questions about the persistence of contemporary colonial frameworks and  explore the meaning of reanimating lost pre-colonial histories.
What can be reclaimed and continued from these histories? What role does contemporary art play in this process?
Through the work of Martínez Garay, motifs such as symbolism, community, personal histories, ancient wisdom, and transformation will be discussed and questions about how to use these principles to improve and challenge our current ideological structures will be raised. 
 

Claudia Martínez Garay’s practice encompasses painting, sculpture, printmaking, video, and site-specific installation. Martínez Garay is interested in how artefacts, cultural relics, and propaganda communicate the history and social-political memory of cultures. Multiple interpretations of historical figures and
artefacts 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.

Selected collections include: Akzo Nobel Art Foundation, Amsterdam (NL); AMC Art Collection, Amsterdam (NL); Central Reserve Bank of Peru, Lima (PE); Cisnero Fontanals Art Foundation (CIFO), Miami, FL (US); Fundación Studie e Richerche Benetton, Treviso (IT); Graeme Briggs Collection (SG); KADIST Collection (FR); KPMG Art Collection, Amsterdam (NL); Hochschild Collection (PE); Lima Art Museum (MALI) (PE); LOOP Collection, MACBA Museu d’Art Contemporani, Barcelona (ES); Micromuseo al fondo hay sitio, Lima (PE); Museu Olho Latino, Atibaia (BR) and Sifang Art Museum, Nanjing (CN). 

The event is part of the accompanying programme of the exhibition Cassandra Complex with works by Claudia Martínez Garay, Hanna-Maria Hammari, Nona Inescu, Özgür Kar, José Montealegre and Dennis Siering, curated by Adriana Blidaru, guest curator of the AIR_Frankfurt Curator-in-Residence Programme 2022.