Exhibition - Gabo Martinez: The Land Of Flowers

JUNE 3, 2023 — SEPTEMBER 9, 2023

FRONT GALLERY

Summer Exhibitions Reception

Friday, June 2, 5:30 – 8:00 PM

The public is invited to celebrate the opening of the summer exhibitions at HCCC.
The evening will also feature refreshments and open studios by the newest resident artists.

Houston Center for Contemporary Craft is pleased to present Gabo Martinez: The Land of Flowers, an exhibition of ceramics and printmaking named for the mythical, flower-filled paradise, known in Nahuatl as xochitlalpan. Influenced by her upbringing in Guanajuato, Mexico, and Texas, Martinez’s vibrant work centers a reclamation of indigenous identity through craft production, using materials and motifs with ties to prehispanic cultures. Her vividly glazed terracotta vessels and large-scale prints are inscribed with motifs like the flower, a deeply significant symbol in the poetic tradition of Nahuatl speakers, known as In xochitl In cuicatl (Flower and Song).

Sweepingly lyrical and filled with metaphor, many surviving examples of the prehispanic oral tradition of Aztec performance—so-called Flower Songs—open with a ritual evocation of the divine. By calling the physicality of a mystical realm like the land of flowers into being, performers of Flower Songs invite audiences into spaces of yearning, hope, and even bliss. With its body of highly graphic prints and sgraffito pottery, this exhibition connects Martinez’s work to the tradition of Flower Songs—subversive in its ability to survive and transmit indigeneity, despite centuries of colonial domination and erasure.  By transforming the Front Gallery at HCCC into a space vibrating with color and possibility, The Land of Flowers richly evokes the artist’s vision of a present and future defined by community, joy, and self-determination.

About Gabo Martinez

Based in San Marcos, Texas, Gabo Martinez is an interdisciplinary artist who was born in Guanajuato, Mexico. Drawing on traditional and contemporary motifs, Martinez utilizes those visual languages to craft a narrative that reclaims and honors her own heritage. She combines the mediums of printmaking and ceramics to create spaces that evoke the warmth of brown bodies with rich vibrant colors. These spaces become vehicles for the reclamation of an historical clay body, known as barro rojo, in the contemporary moment, elevating ancestral ceramic technologies. Barro rojo lends its softness and malleability to objects that can further immortalize cultures and narratives.

Martinez holds a BFA in studio arts with a concentration in ceramics from Texas State University at San Marcos. She is a founder of the Tepeyac Collective, a group that aims to organize and highlight BIPOC clay artists in Central Texas as a response to the lack of diversity and harmful gatekeeping within the present-day clay community. Martinez has completed residencies at the Sonoma Community Center, in California, and at Texas A&M University, in Laredo, Texas. She has been featured in Ceramics Monthly, as well as the Glasstire “4×4” series.

Public Hours
Open Tuesday – Saturday, 10 AM – 5 PM.  (Closed Sunday and Monday.)