Adriana Martínez at MOCAD @ Hyperallergic
DETROIT — The allocation of resources is a critical consideration for any artist, whether on the personal, local, or global level. The question facing Colombian artist Adriana Martínez, and her group of friends and collaborators from university, was how to continue working as artists as they prepared to leave school. They organized into a multi-faceted collective, which manages an under-the-radar gallery space in Bogotá called Miami; a representative arm called Carne that infiltrates art fairs; and a budding curatorial exchange program that functions as an apparatus for continuing education beyond the university setting.
“Bogotá doesn’t have big museums or strong institutions,” said Martínez, during an artist talk with curator-at-large Jens Hoffmann at the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit (MOCAD), where she is having her first major solo show in the United States. “The [university] teachers are showing in galleries. Kids from school learn art in galleries. At the same time, we don’t have a big market, so galleries have also had to be institutions and become meeting points.”