Artists
Argentina
Maflo Martínez
08.07.24 17.07.24
Maflo (María Florencia) Martínez is an Afro-descendant visual artist and Visual Arts teacher graduated from the Instituto Superior Antonio Ruiz de Montoya. Maflo gives workshops, seminars and provides spaces for the production of works in her studio-workshop ‘Ruda’. She is a member of the collective of artists ‘Relatos Visuales’ and the AMTAV—Asociación misionera de trabajadores de las artes visuales. She also continues her uninterrupted production where she finds as a motor the vulnerability understood as an open wound, as a trench/border between the internal and intimate and the external or socially constructed, she seeks with her works to approach with tenderness the emotional and identity wounds and from them she makes visual translations towards drawing, painting, sculpture, photography, video art, etc.
In July 2024, the artist received a grant to participate in the Palimpsest Mural Painting Residency programme. During her time at ´ace, Maflo spent her time on the terrace incorporating her mural painting to the ones already painted. Her painting project, closely linked to her Afro-descent and the issues that touch her as a member of that community collective, is inspired by Ilda’s story, a personal narrative inscribed in the social framework of a communal experience on the margins of history.
ARTIST STATEMENT
My production is driven by vulnerability understood as an open wound, as a trench/border between the internal and intimate and the external or socially constructed. With my works I seek to approach with tenderness the emotional and identity wounds and from them to make visual translations into drawing, painting, sculpture, photography or video art. Stories construct territorialities and bring down the linear notion of history. The story of Ilda, my Afro-descendant grandmother, and the history that she keeps and that reaches me, is that of a part of the Afro-descendant community of the Province of Misiones. Through the construction of affable encounters with people self-perceived as Afro-descendants, we were able to arrive at some oral accounts of our ancestors, history and narratives about current experiences of identity, both intimate and social, as well as spiritual. These encounters gave us the substance to collectively reconstruct, from the affective, a kind of network-map that helps to make visible, commemorate and safeguard through another medium – the visual, in this case pictorial – the history of our community.
BIO
Maflo (María Florencia) Martínez
1995 | Posadas, Misiones (Argentina)
Lives and works in Posadas, Misiones
EDUCATION
2020-2021 | “LaBorde”, laboratory for artists coordinated by Elias Bankowski and Jimena Bueno
2021 | Clinic-Workshop coordinated by Dani Zelko
2022 | Ruido Blanco Residency, Puerto Iguazú, Misiones
2023 | Training Programme in Art, Curatorship and Contemporary Theories, Art Centre of the National University of La Plata
EXHIBITIONS
2023 | Desde los márgenes sensibles. Exhibition of the Relatos Visuales collective, Museo Provincial de Bellas Artes Juan Yaparí, Misiones, Argentina
2023 | Prohibidas y Ambulantes. ArteCo, MUTRIF, Corrientes, Argentina
2023 | Nuestra señora de las señoras. Complejo Cultural Histórico Manzana de las Luces, CABA, Argentina
2023 | II Festival Comunitario Kambuchi Apo. Itá, Paraguay
2022 | Piratas y corsarios. Triple Frontera Museum, Posadas, Misiones, Argentina
2022 | ¿Por qué tan solemne? Tensor (contemporary art gallery), Posadas, Misiones, Argentina









Related Activities
Open Studio
Situated Knowledges
Artists in dialogue
17.07.24
On the afternoon of Wednesday, July 17th 2024, we opened the studio to present the processes of the artists in residence of the June-July period to the local public. During the event, Lillian Broeksmit (USA), Roxana Leiva (El Salvador-USA) and Maflo Martínez (Argentina, artist-in-residency thanks to a fellowship from Fundación´ace), shared their work in different ways. We also had a conversation with Nélida Wisneke, a reference in the Afro community. Nélida is president of the Afrodescendant Association of Misiones, activist for the Rights of Afro-Argentinean Communities, professor at the National University of Misiones with postgraduate degrees in Human Rights and Applied Linguistics, popular storyteller and writer.
The three artists that participated in this residency slot have aspects in common in their works linked to a profound exploration and reflection on resistance and survival. Each one, from her particular perspective and context, addresses issues related to resilience in the face of adversity, identity and memory. Opening her creative process, Lillian took us to explore the streets of Buenos Aires through her work 32.351 bananas, inspired by these hybrid and non-native trees that stand out for their resistance and capacity to adapt to urban conditions. Roxana transported us to El Salvador, a country marked by a history of struggle and survival. 32 years after the Peace Accords, her work confronts us with a reality in which the long-awaited society of peace has not yet arrived for many. Through iconic images of international solidarity posters produced in Cuba during the war, Leiva rescues past ideals and invites us to a profound reflection on the post-war period, identity and the search for a better future for all Salvadorans. Maflo, for her part, focused her work on identity processes linked to the territory and the Afro communities of Misiones. With a tender and poetic gaze, she addressed in her mural painting the emotional and identity wounds of the collective of which she is a part, creating a bridge between the personal and the political.
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