One form of thinking oriented towards the production of an epistemological space where art is not illustrating ideas but enacting thinking and activating experience as an epistemological force that slowly erodes and, eventually, erases the culture-nature divide.
All the texts have been published before and yet—for the sake of creating a dramaturgy and stressing the thesis—they have been reedited and partly rewritten. The texts aim to enforce the idea that art is an intelligence that is influenced by ideas and the emergence of new notions but also thinking through experience. An experience that is aesthetic and epistemological in equal terms.
Chus Martínez (born 1972 in Ponteceso, Spain) has a background in philosophy and art history. Currently she is the Head of the Institute of Art of the FHNW Academy of Arts and Design in Basel, Switzerland. Before she was the Chief Curator at El Museo Del Barrio (2012-2014), New York. She was dOCUMENTA (13) Head of Department, and Member of Core Agent Group. Previously she was Chief Curator at MACBA, Barcelona (2008-2011), Director of the Frankfurter Kunstverein (2005-2008) and Artistic Director of Sala Rekalde, Bilbao (2002-2005).
For the 56th Biennale di Venezia (2015), Martínez curated the National Pavilion of Catalonia with the filmmaker Albert Serra; for the 51st Biennale di Venezia (2005) she also curated the Cyprus National Pavilion; in 2014/2015 served as alliance of the 14th edition of the Istambul Biennial; in 2008 served as a Curatorial Advisor for the Carnegie International and in 2010 for the 29th Bienal de São Paulo. During her tenure as Director of the Frankfurter Kunstverein she curated solo exhibitions of Wilhelm Sasnal among others; and a series of group exhibitions including “Pensée Sauvage” and “The Great Game To Come”. She was also the founder of the Deutsche Börse Residency Program for international artists, art writers and curators. While at MACBA Martínez curated the Thomas Bayrle retrospective, an Otolith Group monographic show, and an exhibition devoted to television, “Are you ready for TV?” In 2008 Martínez was the curator of the
Deimantas Narkevičius retrospective exhibition, “The Unanimous Life” at the Museo de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid, which traveled to major European museums.
Martínez lectures and writes regularly including numerous catalogue texts and critical essays, and is a regular contributor to
ArtforumMousse and
Spike, among other international journals.
