V. Kim Martinez is a Salt Lake native and has been a professor of painting and drawing at the University of Utah since 2001. Martinez received her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and is interested in painting and drawing, encaustic painting, murals, foundry, mosaics and video animation. Her research concerns societal structures which fluctuate between the positive and negative, the concrete and the abstract. Martinez is an enthusiastic educator and is committed to public engagement through the arts .

Statement

7 Steps Forward, 7 Steps Back: Bio Power was motivated by Martinez’s experience traveling the historic routes of Mexican and Native American migrants along what is now the United States–Mexico border. Her research strategy included print and electronic text, mapping of historical/contemporary northern/southern migratory routes, and observational fieldwork that integrated her familial history and conversations with migrants who also made the journey. The compositions are not literal representations, but rather intellectual concepts and metaphors of human presence and motivation.