Associação Cultural Videobrasil

CLAUDIA MARTÍNEZ GARAY is an artist. She graduated in arts from the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru (2007), with residencies at Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris (2013) and Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten (2017). She works with various media, especially painting and installation. Her work addresses the social and political memory of Peru, exploring iconographies of official and unofficial artistic archives. Her individual exhibitions include Kachkaniraqkun!/¡Somos aún!/¡We are, still!, Art Basel Miami (2018); I WILL OUTLIVE YOU, Grimm Gallery, New York (2018), and Allá en el caserío, acá en el matorral / There in the homestead, here in the thicket, Ginsberg Galería, Lima (2018), among others. Her collective exhibitions include the biennials of Shanghai (2018) and Cuenca (2014) and the triennials of the New Museum, New York (2018) and San Juan, Puerto Rico (2015).

The work’s title ÑUQA KAUSAKUSAQ QHEPAYKITAPAS / I WILL OUTLIVE YOU (2017, vídeo) —written in Mochica, one of the many native languages spoken today in Peru—can be loosely translated as “I will outlive you”. The Moche civilization, famous for its pottery, developed in that region from ancient times up to approximately the 7th century AD, and its language was widespread in the Inca Empire at the time of the Spanish invasion. Drawing on the Moche belief in the afterlife and a human figure featured in an artifact of that culture exhibited at the Berlin Ethnological Museum, the artist fictionalizes a timeline from her childhood to her symbolic incarceration at the Berlin institution.

The work ¡KACHKANIRAQKUN! / ¡SOMOS AÚN! / ¡WE ARE, STILL! (2018, instalação) is made up of pottery elements that materialize in three dimensions the issues present in the artist’s video ÑUQA KAUSAKUSAQ QHEPAYKITAPAS. Placed in a neutral white space, they seem to be in a limbo, suspended in time, as if waiting for the arrival of the character developed in the video.