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Francesca Martí
Born: 1 December, 1957 Sóller, Mallorca, Spain Nationality: Spanish Occupation: Artist Website www.francescamarti.com

Francesca Martí is a Spanish contemporary artist born in Mallorca, whose multi-media work encompasses sculpture, photography, painting, drawing, videos and performance. She works between Mallorca, Spain and Stockholm, Sweden.

Biography
Francesca Martí was born in the town of Sóller on the island of Mallorca on December 1, 1957. Her work focuses on the themes of borders and migration, memory and communication, society and transformation, human nature and how we adapt to new technology.

She uses the "Human body and movement to recreate the human condition from different perspectives: soul, border, refuge, society, politics, globality, fantasy, fable, fiction or true story", writes Juanjo Oliva Gallardo.

After studying at the fine art academy Escuela Libre del Mediterráneo Torrens Lladó, first in Barcelona, then Palma, Martí emerged on the Spanish art scene in the early 1990s with solo and group exhibitions in Palma, Barcelona and Madrid (her first solo show was in 1991 at the Galeria Joan Oliver "Maneu" in Palma). Her paintings on canvas were soon featured in solo shows at Paule de Boeck Fine Arts in Ghent (Belgium), Bruton Street Gallery in London (U.K.), Galeria Altair in Palma de Mallorca (1995, 2000 , 2006 , 2011 ), and at the Kunstmuseum Bonn in Germany, and the Casal Solleric and Fundació Pilar i Joan Miró , both in Palma de Mallorca. She was one of six artists to represent Spain in 2001 at the XXI Biennale of Alexandria in Egypt. It was at this time that Martí developed her Fly series of photographs, collages and videos. The common housefly became her artistic collaborator, which she recorded when it walked through pigment on her studio table in Mallorca, and leaving behind coloured traces on paper. "Martí's flies represent the disruptive intrusion of the life force into the process of creating art. The fly upsets habitual patterns of thought," writes William Jeffet, curator Salvador Dali Museum, Florida, in the book Com es fan les imatges, 2003, Kunstmuseum Bonn, Germany. Her Senses and Movements and the Soul series from this time depict dancing figures, silhouettes, bold brushstrokes and painted body parts. She won First Prize for her Soul exhibition in the Spanish pavilion at the X International Biennale of Cairo, Egypt in 2006 and the next year, her Tears project was awarded the prize for the best installation at the First International Biennial of Montijo , Portugal. Her work was exhibited in solo shows at the Jordan National Gallery of Fine Arts in Amman (Jordan) in 2007, The Genia Schreiber University Art Gallery in Tel Aviv (Israel) in 2007, The Royal Spanish Academy in Rome and the Villa Pisani in Venice (Italy) both in 2008. Accompanied by the publication of a 100-page book, her solo exhibition Echoes, took place in 2008 at Es Baluard Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Palma (Spain). At Es Baluard, she exhibited her Tears series of paintings and videos, inspired by the cave dwellings and architecture constructed by the Nabateans at Petra in Jordan, with human figures emerging from holes torn in her large, monochrome canvases. During this period, Martí participated in many international art fairs including Arco, Art Cologne, Bologna Art Fair, Miami Art Fair and Art Dubai.

The 400-page monograph Francesca Martí – Borders of Reality was published in 2011. Further exhibitions took place at Lipanjepuntin Artecontemporanea (Rome and Trieste ), Galerie Martina Kaiser (Cologne), Epson Kunstbetrieb (Dusseldorf) and Galleria Il Ponte Contemporanea (Rome). In 2012, beginning her ongoing representation by the Gerhardt Braun Gallery based in Palma de Mallorca, Andratx and Madrid, her monumental video sculpture Planet of Fusions was installed in the central hall at Art Fair Cologne. This huge metal structure (7 metres in diameter) provided viewers with a constant stream of information and static interference. "She emphasises how language has changed since the pace of technology, which in turn, affects the pace of our thoughts. In preparation for her 2012 Planet of Fusions, Francesca interviewed people from all walks of life, whether it be politicians, fishermen or artists, to present a multimedia piece involving 150 recycled satellite dishes. On each satellite, video portraits and news broadcasts were projected, calling into question not what we speak, but how. 'Words are not the same as before, the communication was different. People had more time to think, now everything is just too fast'.” In 2013 and 2014, Martí was a guest lecturer in the field of performance at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama in London. The exhibition Francesca Martí: works from 2000 to 2014 was held at Gallery Pyo in Seoul (Korea) in 2014 as a retrospective of photographs, video installations, paintings, sculptures and performances from her series Fly, Soul, Tears and Scream. Her video Painting the Soul (2006-2015), with classical dancer Sergio Expósito was shown at the Venice International Experimental Film and Performance Art Festival in 2015, during the 56th Biennale di Venezia. She was also one of the five featured artists at the 2nd Brabant Biennale in Tilburg (The Netherlands) and her videos were included in the International Video Art Limousine Festival in New York. Following the installation of her large-scale Marine Rebirth sculpture in the port city of Aqaba in Jordan, her Dreamers project was published as a book with text by Pilar Ribal Simó. First produced in 2012, Marti's Dreamers and Believers sculptures are seated or standing androgynous male figures, either isolated or amassed in groups, which reveal the fingerprints made by the artist when she molds them in clay. Later they are cast in bronze or aluminium, sometimes in grand proportions of up to two metres tall. Her Migrant Angel solo show at Galeria Kreisler in Madrid was staged as part of the 2016 Bienal Miradas de Mujeres. The Danubiana Meulensteen Art Museum in Bratislava, Slovakia, hosted Transformation (2017), a major retrospective of her work accompanied by a 128-page catalogue. In 2019, her work was seen in solo shows at Reiners Gallery in Marbella (Spain), at DNA Galerie in Berlin, then at MPV Gallery in Den Bosch in the Netherlands. Her outdoor sculptural installation of seven Dreamers in polished aluminium was commissioned for the park at the headquarters of Prodrive Technologies in Eindhoven, The Netherlands, to symbolize the seven-star constellation of Ursa Major (Big Bear) as seen in the Dutch skies and throughout the northern hemisphere. In her Copper series of installations and videos beginning in 2020, the artist looks at copper in terms of its value as a metal, but also for its medical, symbolic, alchemical and mystical properties. Her Copper performance was staged in 2021 at the Swedish Historical Museum in Stockholm developed with the support of the Royal Embassy of Spain to Sweden, the Centro Sefarad-Israel in Madrid and the Judisk Kultur i Sverige in Stockholm - involving 15 international performers (many with forebears who had survived the Holocaust), focused on the idea of memory, connectivity and remembrance. In combination with a large show of work by the renowned Chinese artist Xiao Hui Wang, the dual exhibition Dreamers launched the new Xiao Hui Wang Museum in Shanghai in 2022. A 208-page monograph about Martí's work was produced by the Zhuzhong Art Museum in Beijing, which purchased a larger-than-life sized stainless steel sculpture of Dreamer - Altair for its permanent collection. "Francesca Martí understands the necessity of communication", writes German curator Dieter Ronte in the Echoes book published by Zhuzhong Art Museum. "She doesn't argue with self reflecting art, but presents artworks which have a strong appeal towards society". Combining sculpture, multi-track video projections and a soundtrack composed by Zack Hemsey, Green Swarm (2022) was organized as an immersive installation in a vaulted space at the Gerhardt Braun Gallery in Palma de Mallorca. This was an installation of a swarm of painted, aluminum sculptures of flies, butterflies, and dragonflies with a video projection produced by the artist in collaboration with LADAT (the department of animation and audio-visual technology, established in 1988 in Palma as part of the University of the Balearic Islands.) Green Swarm represents "her visual research about the themes of collective behavior and herd mentality. ". This includes her images of crowds in different cities and her groups of small Believers sculptures representing anonymous commuters and migrants arriving at new destinations.

She was one of 16 international artists invited to participate in Rohkunstbau 27 at the Schloss Altdöbern, 120 kms south east of Berlin, curated by Dr. Heike Fuhlbrügge. In 2023, installations and sculptures by Martí were featured in the ENERGY group exhibition at the Koelwaterhal, a multi-purpose cultural centre in a former water-cooling plant in Zwolle, the Netherlands. This included a crowd of her small Believers sculptures traversing the wall inside the industrial space. The 208-page publication Passage and Presence, written by Mark Gisbourne, with contributions from Heike Fuhlbrügge, Alia Lin, Pilar Ribal Simó, Marifé Santiago-Bolaños, Michael Stoeber, Jonathan Turner and others, was published by DCV Publishers in Berlin to accompany Marti's Flux exhibition , at the Gerhardt Braun Gallery in Madrid (2023). Martí continually plots change "since transitional reverie and metamorphosis underpin so many aspects of her aesthetics," writes Mark Gisbourne.

For a complete list of solo and group shows: https://www.francescamarti.com/exhibitions/

Performance and video
Over the years, Martí has staged and filmed performances with a diverse range of collaborators including actors, musicians, singers, dancers, fashion models and athletes, using her imagery to create new photographic series and video installations. Primary among her performance-based works are Music and Fly (2002) with Belgian composer Dirk Brossé, When music meets visual arts (2006) as a live-painting and video performance with conductor Walter Proost and the Orchestra of the Lowlands at the Flagey Concert Hall in Brussels , Painting the Soul (2006) with Spanish classical dancer Sergio Expósito, Cocoon, Scream and Crystal (2008) as an "explosion of colour and freedom" with American pop-singer Ray Scott, Tears (2008) with performer Kevin Osbourne from Sierra Leone, Droplet (2008) with Australian Olympic gold-medal diver Matthew Mitcham, Mental Disorder (2012) with Dutch actress Karine Holle in "a moving parable about the confusion of a mind" , Annunciation (2012) with Australian photographer John McRae, Green Sound Wave (2012) with Argentinian saxophone player Florencio Cruz, Migrant Angel (2016) with Icelandic vocal performer Gunnlaug "Gulla" Thorvaldsdottir in which "migration triggers anxieties as well as a tremendous sense of loss" , Kingfisher (2017) with Ghanian/American performer Sunru Carter, Ma'at (2017) with English performing arts lecturer Madaleine Trigg interpreting the Egyptian goddess of equilibrium and justice, and Flux (2023) with Italian cabaret singer and recording artist Filippo "Pheel" Balliana. “In all my previous performance videos, a musician or composer created new music to accompany my images. The idea has always been to integrate sound into the imagery. For the first time, in Green Sound Wave in 2012, the person composing and playing the music in the live performance has himself become part of the canvas,” said Francesca Marti in an interview with Italian curator Luca Curci. Martí has also created performance-based artworks with groups of students from the Actors Studio in Stockholm (2014), the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama in London (2016), dance students at Pyo Gallery in Seoul, Korea (2014), dancers from the Ellefatale dance company in Bratislava, Slovakia (Believers, 2017) and prisoners at the Centro Penitenciario in Mallorca (part of Cocoon, 2008).

Since 1990, during her travels to countries including Burma, China, Cuba, Jordan, Peru, U.S. and Zanzibar, Martí has used her camera to record images which she then connects to her current artistic themes. "My world today is full of inspirations coming from nature, mythology, social issues and space-age technology, but always with the basic idea of the importance of human values, both pragmatic and sensory."

Awards

In 2006, Martí's Soul exhibition in the Spanish Pavilion at the X International Biennale of Cairo (Egypt) was awarded first prize by the jury.

In 2008, at the First International Biennial of Montijo (Portugal), awarded the first prize for Tears in the category: Installations.

Family

Francesca Martí was previously married to Toní Martí (one daughter) and Christopher Strickland. Since 2004, she has been married to Gunnar Dahl. Her daughter is hotel owner Barbara Martí.

Bibliography - book sources

Com es fan les imatges, 2003, texts by William Jeffet, Pilar Ribal and Dieter Ronte, published by Kunstmuseum Bonn, Germany

Francesca Martí - Echoes, 2008, texts by Aina Calvo, Manuel Romero, Cristina Ros, Enrique Tufet-Opi, Jonathan Turner, published by Es Baluard, Museu d'Art Moderni i Contemporani de Palma ISBN: 978-84-935852-7-3

Francesca Martí - Borders of Reality, 2011, texts by Roland van Dinten, Khalid Khreis, Cristina Macaya, Matthew Mitcham, Baltasar Porcel, Violant Porcel, Bernat Rabassa, Manuel Romero, Pedro A. Serra, Giuliana Stella, Jonathan Turner, Kees van Twist, and others, published by Bokförlaget Arena, Sweden ISBN: 978-91-7843-367-4

Francesca Martí - Transformation, 2017, texts by Pilar Ribal and Kees van Twist, with Mercedes Estarellas, Gerard Meulensteen, Juanjo Oliva Gallardo, Dieter Ronte and Jonathan Turner, published for Danubiana Meulensteen Art Museum, Bratislava, Slovakia

Francesca Martí - Echoes (with Xiao Hui Wang), 2022, texts by Alia Lin, Dieter Ronte and Jonathan Turner, with Mark Gisbourne, Pilar Ribal Simó and others, published by Zhuzhong Art Museum, Beijing

Francesca Martí - Passage and Presence, 2023, texts by Mark Gisbourne with Heike Fuhlbrügge, Alia Lin, Matthew Mitcham, Pilar Ribal Simó, Marifé Santiago-Bolaños, Michael Stoeber, Gunnlaug Thorvaldsdottir and Jonathan Turner, published by Dr. Cantz'sche Verlagsgesellschaft (DCV), Berlin ISBN: 978-3-96912-126-9

External links

Studio Francesca Martí www.francescamarti.com official website

Gerhardt Braun Gallery https://gb-gallery.es/artist/marti-francesca