Maritza Perez

I am a multimedia Cuban artist working across media, materials, and scales, from small collage to large art installations. I am a painter, sculptor, and photographer and use any of those in my work. I grew up in the second oldest part of the city of Havana, Cuba, three blocks from Havana Bay and the broad seawall stretching for 5 miles along the coast from old Havana to the new. From San Francisco, to Atlanta and many cities in between have been my home, and also Europe for several months and for a while the countryside in South Central Appalachia.

Crafting narratives that exist in the uncanny space between facts and fiction and using old and new materials I make artworks with unpredictable stories half revealed that are imbued with history.

I explore the dynamics of power relations, social constructs, fragmentation, transgressions, migrations and myths. Central to this is the weight of memory shaping the nonlinear continuity of history and geography, people and places.

My process is to allow stories to surface, to propose ways in which we mutate perspectives and see with new eyes allowing for the openness of alternative readings to emerge. From unexpected sources new works are created and official narratives are re-examine...

MFA, Master of Fine Arts in Visual Arts, San Francisco State University, San Francisco, CA

BFA, Bachelor of Fine Arts in Visual Arts, San Francisco Art Institute, San Francisco, CA

Escuela de Artes Plásticas, San Juan, Puerto Rico

Liga de Estudiantes de Arte, San Juan, Puerto Rico

SOLO EXHIBITIONS

2011 Testimonium, Edith Davis Gallery, Rose Center, Morristown, TN

2010 Maritza Perez, Collage and Painting, Old City Gallery, Knoxville, TN

1997 Metahistory Umbilicus or “El ombligo Torcido de la Metahistoria”, site-specific installation, ATA, San Francisco, CA

1995 Latitud Norte, Art in Public Places, San Francisco Art Commission, Market Street Art in Transit, San Francisco, CA

1995 Coordenada O, The Luggage Store Gallery Annex, San Francisco, CA

1991 The Heart, the Mind, and El Coco, 8mn. Color video projection-performance, San Francisco State University, San Francisco, CA

1990 Ciclo Vital, site-specific installation-Intervention, sewage plant grounds, San Francisco, CA

1987 Subconscious Reality, Manuelita Gallery, San Francisco, CA

SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS

2017 Somos Atlanta, Eye Drum Gallery, Atlanta, GA

2016 Border Artists, Somos Sur Art Collective, MURMUR Gallery, Atlanta, GA

2013 Arte Correo Trinidad & Tobago, Bohemia Gallery, Port of Spain, Trinidad

2012 A Box for St Jude, Collage Gallery, Coral Gables, Fl

2010 At the Altar, Eight Shooters Galley, A1Lab, Knoxville, TN

2010 Smaller Than a Bread Box, A1Lab, Knoxville, TN

2010 Art for Haiti, Fredric Snitzer Gal...