The Copper Transmissions exhibition by Francesca Martí at the Gerhardt Braun Gallery in Palma, presents the many facets of her work, including sculpture, photography, installation, performance and video.
Standing at more than three metres tall, Martí’s monumental sculpture Venus in Copper (2022-2024) acts as a guardian angel. Cast in aluminium, the artist has tightly bound this large-scale, copper-coloured female figure in cord. Significantly, copper is one of the seven planetary metals linked to Venus, both the planet and the goddess.
Other works by Martí feature groups of small copper-coloured Believers figures, shown migrating across photographed landscapes in Amman, Beijing, Hanoi and Madrid. Meanwhile, a procession of porcelain figurines wrapped in cotton thread and painted in copper can be seen as being nomads climbing a perilous slope. Marti explains that this installation of ascending figurines is about survival, equilibrium and confronting danger.
«When the daily news invaded my soul with fear, my larger Copper project was born of introspection. I began to work with small figurines which I have been collecting since 2012, representing people from different times, and from all over the world. I started to wrap them with copper thread, covering their bodies and faces. I imagined that these figures I was wrapping in copper were being elevated by the memories of our existence. As part of my research, I then invited 15 people from different backgrounds to complete a new performance with me at the Historiska Museum in Stockholm in 2021.»
The Copper performance and subsequent Copper Transmissions video reflect upon the historical moments of mass movement in Europe and beyond. It also pays respect to those who could not emigrate amid the chaos and horrors of war, expulsion and persecution.
“Global communication, cosmopolitan cities, people’s fears, migration … all these human interactions are at the core of my work», says the artist. «I strongly believe in the power of our dreams, in our changing world, in a new contemporary expression to communicate and transmit our legacy of the past”.
«The cinematic Copper Transmissions video discusses the themes of freedom, connectivity and memory, and looks at how we each respond to our own personal history», writes curator Jonathan Turner in the book Francesca Martí – Passage and Presence, published in 2023 by DCV in Berlin. «It looks at copper in terms of its value as a metal, but also for its medical, symbolic, alchemical and mystical properties. With a poetic force, Francesca Martí’s Copper project interprets aspects of social justice, migration, history and liberation».
This is an ongoing, itinerant exhibition project with the support of: Royal Embassy of Spain in Stockholm; Historiska Museum, Stockholm; The Judisk Kultur i Sverige, Sweden; Centro Sefarad-Israel, Madrid; Amicale Mathausen, Spain; AECI Accion Cultural, Spain; and J.L. Ponce Foundry, Madrid.
Copper Transmissions – Francesca Martí
Gerhardt Braun Lab
Calle Sant Feliu, Palma 07012. Mallorca, Spain
gallery@gb-gallery.es – tel +34 971 717 493 – www.gb-gallery.es
The exhibition will be open to the public from September 18, 2024, through January 2025, from 11:00 until 19:00