PRESENTATION: Claudia Martínez Garay-Borrowed Air
Claudia Martínez Garay’s practice encompasses painting, sculpture, printmaking, video, and site-specific installation. As well as interrogating European museum collections and histories, Martínez Garay also takes inspiration from her own Andean heritage, exploring historical images, propaganda, and sounds from her home country. Her sculptural works often reference pre-Columbian knowledge systems and are often combined in larger installations in dialogue with symbolic elements derived from her research.
By Efi Michalarou
Photo: GRIMM Gallery Archive
Claudia Martínez Garay presents “Borrowed Air”, her third solo exhibition, showcasing a compelling new body of work that she describes as capturing “moments of rupture”—instances where European modernity clashes with Andean cosmovisions, marking distinct before-and-after transitions. Through printmaking, etching, and painting—media historically underrepresenting brown bodies—Martínez Garay offers vivid expressions rooted in an Andean perspective. Her works carry a profound political and emotional weight, prompting viewers to reconsider history and identity from the “other side” of the colonial divide. In “Intrusos en sus tierras” (2024), Martínez Garay draws inspiration from the aesthetic of state-sanctioned school textbooks—tools often used for nationalist propaganda—to question the supposed impartiality of official historical accounts. A recurring theme in this series is the contrast between brown and white, a deliberate chromatic strategy that underscores the visibility of brown bodies in the gallery space. One print depicts a white hand sketching Tupac Amaru II, the leader of an Indigenous uprising against the Spanish. The image probes the narrative lens through which his story is told, examining how visual language shapes a nation’s collective imagination. It also raises the possibility of using visual tools to challenge dominant historical narratives. Another print portrays two brown boys separated by a white mask, evoking both the syncretic traditions of Andean carnival and the visceral colonial critiques of Frantz Fanon in works like “Black Skin, White Masks” (1952), where Fanon observes whiteness as an imposed destiny for subaltern bodies. The series’ centerpiece is a striking work featuring a leather shoe—a symbol of urbanity and “civilization”—crushing a quena, an Andean flute of cultural significance. This powerful image references the epistemicide enacted during Spanish colonial conquests, where Indigenous ways of knowing and relating to the Earth were silenced. Yet silence in Martínez Garay’s work becomes a form of resistance—an unwillingness to be interpreted or framed through Western anthropological paradigms. In her latest series of paintings, Martínez Garay reduces imagery to its essential elements, employing an economy of form to communicate directly and powerfully. These paintings rely on silence and negative space as much as the visible elements, creating works that are both minimal and teeming with vitality. The silent scream of “Los Eternos”, akin to the tension before boiling water erupts, captures the raw energy of this series. In “Altar para Marina”, Martínez Garay delves into the complexities of our current political landscape. Drawing from contemporary iconography and archival material, she crafts intimate sketches that are later amplified and printed on metal. The resulting compositions blur the origins of their elements, tied together by a drawn rope symbolizing an effort to create coherence amidst diversity. This imagery alludes to the entangled relationship between our present condition and the unresolved legacies of colonialism. Through “Borrowed Air”, Martínez Garay offers a profound exploration of history, identity, and resistance, illuminating the enduring intersections of past and present with unflinching clarity.
Photo: Claudia Martínez Garay, Intrusos en sus tierras, 2024, Commissioned by Dundee Contemporary Arts, Risographs on 140sgm Fedrigoni, framed, 113 x 183.5 cm | 44 1/2 x 72 1/4 in, Edition of 3 plus 1 artist’s proof, © Claudia Martínez Garay, Courtesy the artist and GRIMM Gallery
Info: GRIMM Gallery, 2 Bourdon Street, London, United Kingdom, Duration: 9/1-22/2/2025, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 11:00-18:00, https://grimmgallery.com/