Francesca Martí

The 400-page monograph Francesca Martí – Borders of Reality was published in 2011, aligned to further exhibitions in Spain, Sweden, The Netherlands, Germany, Italy and Australia. Other shows have been held at Lipanjepuntin Artecontemporanea (Trieste), Galerie Martina Kaiser (Cologne), Smith & Hall Gallery, (Sydney), Epson Kunstbetrieb (Dusseldorf), Galleria Il Ponte Contemporanea (Rome) and Gerhardt Braun Gallery (Palma, Spain). In 2012, her large-scale video sculpture Planet of Fusions was installed in the central hall at Art Fair Cologne.

Having previously developed theatrical projects with musicians and choreographers in Belgium, Martí has been working since 2013 as a guest lecturer in the field of performance at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama in London. Francesca Martí: works from 2000 to 2014 was held at Gallery Pyo in Seoul in 2014 as a retrospective of photographs, video installations, paintings, sculptures and performances from her series Fly, Soul, Tears and Scream. It was her first solo exhibition in Asia.

In 2015, Martí designed the new wine label for the 2013 Cabernet Sauvignon/Merlot blend produced in Mallorca by the highly regarded Bodega Son Mayol vineyard. Her video Painting the Soul (2006-2015), performed by classical dancer Sergio Exposito to original music by Daniel Alzamora-Dickin, was featured as part of the 2015 Venice International Experimental Film and Performance Art Festival at Ca’ Zanardi, aligned to the 56th Biennale di Venezia. She was also one of the five featured artists at the 2nd Brabant Biennale in Tilburg in The Netherlands and her videos were included in the International Video Art Limousine Festival in New York, an innovative project launched by LIQUID CITIES NYC.

Following the installation of her large-scale Marine Rebirth sculpture near the lake in Aqaba in Jordan, Martí’s Dreamers project was published as a 64-page catalogue with text by Pilar Ribal. Her Migrant Angel solo show at Galeria Kreisler in Madrid was staged as part of the 2016 Bienal Miradas de Mujeres.

Two new series of photographs emerged from twin performances staged by Martí in her studio in Mallorca in 2017. Flight is an updated reinterpretation of her previous Fly series, composed of group portraits of nine powder-faced models coming from Spain, Sweden, Pakistan, Cuba, Nigeria and the Czech Republic, while Ma’at focused on English performer Madaleine Trigg in the guise of the Egyptian goddess of truth, justice and cosmic order. In late 2017, after her Kingfisher solo show at Gerhardt Braun Gallery in Palma de Mallorca, her inclusion in a show of digital photography at the Los Angeles Center of Digital Art and her participation in several group shows in museums in Italy and South America, the Danubiana Meulensteen Art Museum in Bratislava, Slovakia, hosted Transformation, a major retrospective of her work, accompanied by a 128-page catalogue. In 2018, Marti’ inaugurated the new Gerhardt Braun Gallery in Andratx in Mallorca with an installation of her Believers series.

In 2019, Marti’s 7 Dreamers of Eindhoven – a series of life-sized figures in mirror-polished aluminium – were permanently installed in the sculpture park at Prodrive Technologies in southern Netherlands, with another installation of 200 figures scaling the walls in the reception area. Her Energy Ray solo show filled the 17th Century palace at the Gerhardt Braun Gallery in Palma and her Ellipse solo was part of the first season of the new Reiners Contemporary Art in Marbella. Several works were featured in the Blurred Eagerness group show at DNA Galerie in Berlin, followed by a dual exhibition in late 2021 of works by Marti’ together with American intermedia artist Gary Hill. In 2022, the «Dreamers» double solo show by Chinese artist Xiao Hui Wang together with Francesca Marti’ took place at the brand new Xiao Hui Wang Art Museum in Shanghai, accompanied by two major catalogues. At the same time, Marti’s «Green Swarm» exhibition of video, sculpture, photography and installation, with a soundtrack by composer and musician Zac Hemsey, was held at the Gerhardt Braun Gallery in Palma de Mallorca, and her work was included in «Future – Into the Open», the 27th edition of the prestigious Rohkunstbau curated by Dr. Heike Fuhlbrügge, at the Altdöbern Castle, Germany. 
Francesca Marti’s 208-page hardcover book «Passage and Presence» is published by DCV (Dr. Catz’sche Verlagsgesellschaft, Berlin) and presented at the 2023 Frankfurt Book Fair. Designed by Book Book in Berlin, «Passage and Presence» focuses on Marti’s sculptures, installations, drawings, videos and performances from the past 10 years, with newly commissioned texts by Mark Gisbourne, Heike Fuhlbrügge, Alia Lin, Pilar Ribal, Marifé Santiago-Bolaños, Michael Stoeber, Jonathan Turner and others. Aligned to the book, the large scale Flux solo show was held over three floors at the Madrid branch of the Gerhardt Braun Gallery. In 2024, her Quondam video installation at the new Art & Design District Palma, in which two monumental Dreamer and Believer sculptures hold a salvaged satellite dish, functioned as a moving personal documentary about migrants and the working class neighbourhood of La Soledad.

In 2008 Martí attracted the attention of Australian-born, Rome-based curator Jonathan Turner, an independent art critic who has organized more than 500 solo and group exhibitions in museums and galleries around the globe, and has worked with the Biennale di Venezia, the Biennale of Sydney and Manifesta (editions in Rotterdam, Ljubljana, Frankfurt, San Sebastian, Alto Adige, Murcia, and Genk). He is the prize-winning author of numerous books and catalogues, the correspondent for Tableau (Amsterdam), ARTnews (New York), genius-online (Trieste) and many other international publications and Turner has worked with Martí on projects in Amsterdam, Beijing, Bologna, Bratislava, Havana, Madrid, New York, Palma, Rome, Seoul, Shanghai, Soller, Sydney, Trieste and Venice.