Marta Sanchez

Marta is a visual artist and folklorist who is inspired to keep Mexican art forms alive and socially relevant, and to use her art to facilitate reflection on social issues. Her primary mediums are oil paint and printmaking. She often works within the retablo format, a Mexican traditional process incorporating narrative paintings on tin, integrating poetry or other text into her pieces. Her art reveals experiences shared by many Chicanos—displacement in a land where their ancestors lived for centuries; spirituality that is rooted in Christianity and indigenous traditions; and experiences of birth, work, family, love, and death. Her materials include scrap metal, tinplate, wood, and even eggshells, reflecting the ingenuity of the Chicano/a artist who needs to make art despite socioeconomic barriers. Another aspect of Marta’s art for social change is teaching and mentoring youth. She has worked extensively within the Philadelphia public and private school systems as well as with college students, and sees great opportunity in sharing her traditional art forms to promote self-confidence and the sense of possibility amongst Latino and non-Latino youth alike. Her work includes The Horizon, a painting symbolically depicting a bridge that she used to cross to get beyond the train yards she grew up near in San Antonio, Texas, Precious Cargo, a reflection on immigrants who have come to America out of survival rather than pursuit of success, and Retablo for Marina and Celina, which celebrates two young contemporary Chicana twins who have become great paleontologists. Marta sees opportunity for social change in the process of developing her work as well as its completion. She is interested in allowing space for serendipity, as she sees art as not always about control but about letting a piece come together and evolve.

Marta will facilitate her Cascarones Por La Vida project, encouraging Latino youth, artists, and community members to participate in hand-painting Mexican confetti-filled eggs that will be sold in a silent auction to raise funds for families affected by HIV/AIDS. These funds will help young people in these families get counseling and take art therapy classes. Marta created this project as a way to educate different communities, especially the Latino community, about HIV/AIDS. Her own experience of losing an uncle to AIDS and then feeling her family’s silence and shame about his death, has inspired Marta to create an artistic platform for others to talk about their own experiences and to break the silence and stigma attached. Marta will also work with young people in Camden to document their experiences creating the cascarones through photography and poetry that will then be shared on public buses in Camden.

Solo exhibition at Saint Joseph's University. Support towards framing.