Architectural Weave and Wire I by Mär Martinez are examples of her paintings that were inspired by weaving and will be featured in a loom, a fence, a wire, a thread at the Maitland Art Center. The title of the exhibition refers to the physical and metaphorical materials used to define space. | Courtesy Maitland Art Center
You might call interdisciplinary artist Mär Martinez a citizen of the world. Since graduating with an art degree from UCF in 2020, the 28-year-old has landed residencies in Pennsylvania, Georgia, New York, Florida, Japan and most recently, Turkey.
Her experience in that Middle Eastern country was fueled by a desire to learn more about an art form with which she felt connected—weaving—and resulted in a body of paintings that will debut this summer in a solo exhibition, a loom, a fence, a wire, a thread, which will run through July 5 at the Maitland Art Center.
The title refers to the physical and metaphorical materials used to define space—from the domesticity of a loom and thread to the more restrictive connotations of a fence and wire.
Martinez says she was drawn to the weaving process because her family brought heirloom handwoven Turkish rugs with them when they fled Syria. Years later—thanks to earning a Fulbright Research in the Arts award—she would have a chance to spend nine months in Turkey in 2024 and 2025.
There she learned more about this cultural practice, which can be traced back more than 3,500 years. “I like the way that the title [of the exhibition] weaves together and reflects itself,” says Martinez, who specializes in sculptural painting.
She adds: “Weaving draws parallels between the loom, which is the structure of weaving and the reason I was in Istanbul in the first place; and the fence, which was a barricade—an urban grid—that physically held my experience and politically shaped my time there.”
Martinez, drawing upon nighttime walks through the neighborhoods of Istanbul, transforms such hostile architectural barriers as barbed wire into motifs of resistance and reweaving as she ponders themes of urbanization, surveillance and cultural memory.
“I view the physical act of weaving thread endlessly upon itself to create something as a metaphor for the strength and resiliency,” adds Martinez. “This body of work operates under a tension, with figure, wire, form and fabric mirroring one another.”
Before her creativity was sparked in Turkey, she spent 2021 to 2023 immersed in the artist-in-residence program at the Maitland Art Center. The program carries forth the center’s original mission by providing studio space for 12 to 18 months to an established or emerging creator.
“Mär is intuitively connected to why she does what she does and how that manifests in her work,” says Chief Curator Dan Hess. “We get to view her work interpreting in a contemporary way these centuries-old practices—revealing not only the patterns in the traditions but also the conversations and the stories that are relevant for this moment in time.”
The Maitland Art Center is located at 231 West Packwood Avenue, Maitland. For more information, call 407.239.2181 or visit artandhistory.org.
