MARTA MARIA PEREZ BRAVO
Marta María Pérez was born in Havana in 1959. She graduated with a degree in painting from the Academia Nacional de Bellas Artes San Alejandro in Marianao, outside Havana, in 1979 and from the Instituto Superior de Arte in Havana in 1984. Since the mid-1980s Pérez has made black-and-white photographs that typically show a part of her body. A trademark of Pérez's staged photographs is the centrality of an image that is both surrounded by a diffused focus and contrasted against an iridescent white background. Combining parts of her body, often arranged in unconventional ways, with objects such as oars or candles, Pérez references aspects of the Afro-Cuban religions of Santería and Palo Monte. Uninitiated in these religions, she has nonetheless turned to Afro-Cuban mythology to express female spirituality.
Artist Statement
"Since their beginnings in the 1980’s, my photographic works as well as the videos I created after 2011, have always had an important component of bibliographic research, as well as a continued personal connection with the broad Afro-Cuban religious world and other variations known as “Espiritismo”.
I draw from diverse readings, direct contact with believers and practitioners –
their beliefs, their world concept and material forms of expression that serve to establish a narrow relationship between those influences and my own spirituality - thus creating a parallel between that spiritual wealth and my artistic expression."
