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María Martínez-Cañas

(Cuban, b. 1960, U.S. resident)

Totem Negro VII, 1991

María Martínez-Cañas weaves totemic designs and organic forms into powerful graphic patterns. Her multi-layered works are webs of cultural metaphor exploring her relationship to the land, religion, and history of her native Cuba through highly charged collages that echo Caribbean rhythms. These images are created by cutting intricate designs into large sheets of Amberlith, a masking material, and carefully interweaving the designs with other negatives. The photographs that result from these meticulously crafted master negatives show traces of ancient and contemporary symbolism.

Martínez-Cañas received her BFA from the Philadelphia College of Art (1982) and her MFA in photography from the School of The Art Institute of Chicago (1984). She was the recipient of a Fulbright-Hays Grant in 1986, and of a National Endowment for the Arts Photographer’s Fellowship in 1989. Her work has been exhibited throughout the world and is included in prominent public collections, including the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris; Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona, Tucson; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; and Museum of Modern Art, New York. Born in Havana in 1960, Martínez-Cañas currently resides in Miami.

View all works by María Martínez-Cañas in our collection.