Tromsø Open 2020

SILVIA ELIANA MARTINEZ As a life long immigrant woman artist born in Argentina, raised in Canada and living in Norway, I try to stimulate the relationship between identity, art and territory. My work is based on information originating from distinct cultural systems. It tells a story of immigration and the effects of cultural interaction. Trained in architecture, my practice is now based in multimedia.

It includes painting, photography, printmaking and installation work. A female subject is often represented interacting with a landscape amidst naïve symbols, primary colors or black and white. As part of the immigration process, learning to discriminate (new) cultural codes, words and signs involves looking twice and many more times. Similarly, I have been repeating symbols, colors, and movements for years. Adapting to a new culture also means integrating norms containing at times paradoxical modes of expression. These are found in my work in tensions between order and chaos, and constraint and freedom. For that reason, my subject’s bodies are sites of tensions, but also of significant pleasure.

This creative exploration on the theme of immigration is an opportunity to question our relationship between the self and the other, and the ways we bridge over differences on the land we share.