Exhibition 'Martine Gutierrez - Wunderkind' in Huis Marseille, Museum for Photography
On 27 June Huis Marseille will open Wunderkind, a solo exhibition by American artist Martine Gutierrez (1989, Berkeley). The show unveils a vibrant new collection of photographs that celebrate the art of play. Toys, some preserved from childhood, others handmade by Martine herself, anchor the artist’s ongoing inquiry into how identity is imagined and performed from the earliest years.
The exhibition will debut a series of life-size photographs that pay tribute to dresses handed down to Martine by the women in her life, garments that carry the weight of memory, fantasy and transformation. A special archive of early drawings, Self-Portraits (1993–1995), and childhood films showcase the development of Martine’s artistic voice from the start. In The Search for True Beauty (1999), a ten-year-old Martine directs her babysitter to star in an original fairytale while taking on every supporting role.
Wunderkind traces the delicate line between the origins of self and the awakening of artistic consciousness, inviting questions that resist easy answers: What is art? Who gets to make it? Is the artist a projection, or a perception? Is the artist born or made?
