On 27 June Huis Marseille will open Wunderkind, a solo exhibition by American artist Martine Gutierrez (1989, Berkeley). The show unveils a vibrant new collection of photographs that celebrate the art of play. Toys, some preserved from childhood, others handmade by Martine herself, anchor the artist’s ongoing inquiry into how identity is imagined and performed from the earliest years.
The exhibition will debut a series of life-size photographs that pay tribute to dresses handed down to Martine by the women in her life, garments that carry the weight of memory, fantasy and transformation. A special archive of early drawings, Self-Portraits (1993–1995), and childhood films showcase the development of Martine’s artistic voice from the start. In The Search for True Beauty (1999), a ten-year-old Martine directs her babysitter to star in an original fairytale while taking on every supporting role.
Wunderkind traces the delicate line between the origins of self and the awakening of artistic consciousness, inviting questions that resist easy answers: What is art? Who gets to make it? Is the artist a projection, or a perception? Is the artist born or made?
Biography
Martine Gutierrez is an interdisciplinary artist whose practice spans photography, video, music, and performance. Through self-portraiture and cinematic tableaux, she reimagines identity as both material and method. Her body becomes a site of transformation, an instrument for examining desire and belonging. Drawing from family archives and her multicultural heritage, Martine melds autobiography with artifice. Her characters occupy a wide spectrum of archetypes – mainstream and marginal, sacred and satirical – embodying the ever-shifting terrain of nationality, gender, and sexuality.
At eight years old, Martine had her first solo exhibition and sold her first artwork at La Peña Cultural Center. Since then, her work has since been exhibited internationally, from the 58th Venice Biennale to major public installations across American cities through the Public Art Fund. Her work is also held in numerous public collections including the National Gallery of Art and Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, and the Museum of Modern Art and Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. In 2025, she received a Guggenheim Fellowship in support of completing Wunderkind.
A full text about this show will follow.