
Mark Anthony Martinez, MFA
Visual Artist
Artist Statement
I’m a conceptual artist whose bulk of their practice revolves around a 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.Through 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.”Although this type of work encompasses a majority of my exhibited artwork, there are other subjects I’m eager to explore. Subjects such as labor, science fiction, the erotic and ecological conservation. However, these next creative endeavors come with the understanding that all of my work is created from a space that fully recognizes that I am a person of color.
Brown Sugar, performance documentation, 2013
"White Out," self portrait digital collage, 2014
"Flesh wound," foamboard cut out, photo credit Luis M. Garza, 2016
"No New White Friends," neon courtesy of the "King of Neon", photo credit Andrea Rampone, 2017
"(off) white power," neon courtesy of the "King of Neon", 2017