Sans défense, 2013

Maïté Martinez  

Man summons the animal to tell his own story, his emotions, his faults.

He invents and chooses his words, gives them meaning, writes his fables in which he reveals himself in the guise of an animal-alibi.

But what happened to this initial bias, born to circumvent censorship?

In this game of mirrors, have not animals become the big losers - or even the victims?

The Animal takes on the qualifiers, the symbols that stick to its skin, to the point of merging into ready-made expressions, accepted as realities.

Maïté Martinez seeks to reverse points of view, to shift the way humans look at the animal world.

She likes to challenge commonplaces, to question the obvious and the archetypes that shape our representations.

His work questions animality as much as otherness, revealing what our humanity shares, or hides, from the living.

Through a constant play between language and matter, she makes meaning waver, opening spaces where the boundaries between human and animal are redefined.

Playing with words like shapes, in the light of which our certainties are deconstructed, to rediscover the living where each species, human or animal, participates in the same sensitive framework.

Maïté Martinez is a sculptor and engraver whose universe unfolds between imagination and narration. Her work explores the poetic and symbolic part of life, giving voice to animals and characters to question, with delicacy and accuracy, human nature and its relationship to life.

Maïté Martinez's imagination is nourished by the sources of Galicia, the land of her family heritage. This region, with its powerful nature, sometimes wild and always inhabited by mystery, imbues her work with a singular sensitivity. The stories, beliefs, and popular tales passed down through the generations infuse a relationship with the world where wonder blends with lucidity, humor with depth, and naivety with wisdom.

After graduating in film studies and research at the Sorbonne Nouvelle University in Paris, then in applied arts, she turned to sculpture and engraving.

It all begins with clay, as a welcoming ground. From this material are born figurative and narrative bronzes, where we follow with delight mischievously transgressive animals and characters. Playing with words as much as with forms, his sculptures open spaces of interpretation according to our own perceptions, inviting everyone to discover multiple stories to tame.

Maïté Martinez's works are featured in private collections and are regularly presented in galleries, exhibitions and contemporary art fairs, in France and abroad.