Martine Gutierrez’s work cannot easily be pigeonholed. As a transdisciplinary artist, she uses both photography and video to deconstruct pop culture. Gutierrez is the driving force behind her creations, serving as subject, artist, and muse all at once. She fabricates her own celebrity in order to satirically question existing power structures and objectification in the media. Her approach is rooted in a multiculturalism that stems from her background as a first-generation artist of Indigenous descent and her role as an LGBTQ ally. In her images, she blends the visual language of commercial luxury with a distinctive DIY aesthetic.
Earlier projects, such as *Real Doll* (2013), *Girl Friends* (2014), and *Line Up* (2014), laid the foundation for her explorations of gender and intimacy. In these works, she often used mannequins as ambiguous characters in ever-changing realities. Her semi-autobiographical film series *Martine Part I through IX* is a central piece in her artistic development. This project began during her studies at the Rhode Island School of Design and was completed years later in New York. It follows her character on a journey of self-discovery, from Providence to New York via Central America and the Caribbean, as she interacts with urban architecture and natural elements such as water, sand, and air.
She challenges the construction of binaries by blurring their boundaries; Gutierrez insists that gender, like everything else, is intertwined.
Gutierrez’s visual style stands out for its use of everyday materials. For her costumes and sets, she draws on items such as flowers, feathers, cardboard, and fabric, which she incorporates into a professional advertising context. In her project ANTI-ICON, she portrayed ten mythological and historical figures, including Aphrodite, Atargatis, Cleopatra, Queen Elizabeth I, Gabriel, Lady Godiva, Helen of Troy, Judith, Mulan, and the Queen of Sheba. This series was presented by the Public Art Fund in more than fifty different neighborhoods in 2021. The installation utilized three hundred JCDecaux bus stops as unexpected exhibition spaces for her portraits.
Gutierrez’s work is deeply connected to the deconstruction of binary constructs. She argues that gender is intertwined and rejects the linear framework of oppositional thinking. Her constantly evolving self-image reveals the convergence of diverse ways of being. While she uses the aesthetics of everyday advertising to convey her message, she compels the viewer to reflect on the construction of our own identity. The artist herself powerfully summarizes this complex stance. She challenges the construction of binaries by blurring their boundaries; Gutierrez insists that gender, like all things, is entangled. This makes her contribution to contemporary art discourse indispensable.