PASSAGE
Francesca Martí
curated by Mark Gisbourne and co-curated by Jonathan Turner.
Sat 6 Jun – Sat 4 Jul 2026
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Programme
Vernissage
Sat 6 June 5 – 9pm
Opening times
10 Jun – 4 Jul 2026
Wed – Sat 2 – 6pm
and by person alappointment
Finissage
Sat 4 July 5 – 8pm
Location
HAUNT Centre for Art and Ecologies
Kluckstraße 23A Yard D–10785 Berlin
@haunt_berlin
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HAUNT – Centre for Art and Ecologies in Berlin presents the work of Spanish artist Francesca Martí, in a solo exhibition titled “PASSAGE”, curated by Mark Gisbourne, and co-curator Jonathan Turner.
With a focus on her recent video installations, sculptures, charcoal drawings and photo-based mixed media works, “PASSAGE” traces the development of Martí’s innovative practice over the past two decades, exploring such essential themes as transformation, migration, regeneration, human fragility, and freedom. Her works often highlight aspects of the rapidly changing world of communication, and how this can foster chaos. Instead of mimicking the tropes of mass media, Martí has developed a visual language which is both expressively original and deeply personal.
The current exhibition provides an overview of Martí’s artistic production, loosely based on “Passage and Presence”, the 208-page book written by Mark Gisbourne, Heike Fuhlbrügge, and 8 other international authors, and published by DCV in Berlin in 2023. It includes several sculptures which incorporate recycled satellite dishes, objects which the artist uses as symbols of post-modern archaeology. Once used as devices to receive broadcasts and imagery, Martí instead transforms the abandoned satellite dishes into autonomous artworks in themselves. They depict high-energy, distorted landscapes representing such cities as Beijing, Berlin, Madrid, and New York, referred to by the artist as “cities in a crooked line”. Her new “Pillars of Memory” series are sculptures resembling skyscrapers. Elongated blocks are wrapped with her photographs of the mirrored facades of high-rise buildings, revealing her fascination with how urban settlements exist in a continual cycle of construction, destruction and rebuilding. At the same time, many of her latest works look at how humans – no matter how reliant we have become on technology – need to recognize the importance of remaining integrated as part of the natural world. Martí’s collages of enlarged leaves and her series “Refugees into Nature” further propose her idea of “the leaf as a symbol of the fragility of human life.”
First emerging in 2012, Martí’s “Dreamers” are human figures who reveal the handmade marks of their own creation, having been moulded in clay then reworked in a variety of materials including polished aluminium, bronze and wood. Pensive and calm, the “Dreamers” have evolved into Martí’s “Believers” (from 2018), striding out into the world, crossing borders like migrants in search of change. While her “Believers” are variously gathered together as communities of small sculptures or cast as larger-than-life, solitary figures, Martí’s visual research often focuses on the difference between the charismatic leader and the group dynamic. Her “Green Swarm” installation (2021), for example, tracks the behaviour of suspended metallic insects (the fly, butterfly and dragonfly), accompanied by soundtrack by Zack Hemsey and a video projection showing how as a group, they survive and thrive with teamwork.
Other video works in the exhibition include “Cocoon – Into the Box” (2007, a video projected into a cardboard box showing a performer trying to escape from a white fabric cloak), “Ma’at” (2017, an actress impersonating the ancient Egyptian goddess of cosmic harmony, order, and judicial balance) and “Copper Transmissions” (2021, a performance by a group of 16 participants filmed in Stockholm, based on the healing nature of connectivity, liberty, memory and the nature of legacy). This attitude is also clearly visible in the “Resilience” installation (2026), created together with Rohan Marley, the son of Bob Marley. In the video Martí and Marley, each of whom lost their father at the age of 9, partake in a philosophical but disjointed conversation, discussing their views on honesty, dreams and sense of self. In the video, Martí herself morphs into one of her own “Dreamer” sculptures. As with all of Martí’s work, there is an undercurrent of curiosity and strength regarding the beliefs and values of society.
“The Resilience project is about owning our own destiny, our right to passage, our right to life,” said Rohan Marley.
Francesca Martí lives and works in her native home, Mallorca and in Stockholm. She emerged on the Spanish art scene in the early 1990s with solo and group exhibitions in Palma, Barcelona, and Madrid. Since then she has exhibited in galleries and museums in Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Jordan, South Korea, Turkiye, the U.S.A and beyond. In 2007, her “Soul” exhibition in the Spanish pavilion at the X International Biennale of Cairo (Egypt) was awarded first prize by the jury and in 2008 her “Echoes” solo show of video installations and paintings was staged at Es Baluard Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Palma de Mallorca. In 2017, the Danubiana Meulensteen Art Museum in Bratislava, Slovakia organized “Transformation”, a major retrospective of her work and in 2022, Martí’s “Dreamers” exhibition was launched as the inaugural exhibition at the new Xiao Hui Wang Museum in Shanghai. As well as in galleries in Dusseldorf, Munich, Cologne, and Berlin, Martí’s work has been featured at the Kunstmuseum Bonn (2003) and at the 27th Rohkunstbau, Altdöbern Castle (2022). A new 64-page book has been published to accompany Martí’s “Passage” solo exhibition at Haunt in Berlin.
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BIOGRAPHY
Francesca Martí was born in Mallorca, Spain and she works between Mallorca and Stockholm.
She emerged on the Spanish art scene in the early 1990s with solo and group exhibitions in Palma, Barcelona and Madrid. Her work was soon being featured in such international galleries as Paule de Boeck Fine Arts in Ghent (Belgium), Bruton Street Gallery in London (U.K.), Galeria Altair in Palma de Mallorca (Spain), at the Kunstmuseum Bonn in Germany, Casal Solleric in Palma, and Fundacio Pilar i Joan Miró in Mallorca.
Since 1995, her work has been exhibited in solo shows at The Genia Schreiber University Art Gallery in Tel Aviv (Israel), the Jordan National Gallery of Fine Arts in Amman (Jordan), The Royal Spanish Academy in Rome, the Villa Pisani in Venice (Italy) and as part of a live painting and video performance with the Orchestra of the Lowlands at the Flagey Concert Hall in Brussels in 2006. In 2007, her “Soul” exhibition in the Spanish pavilion at the X International Biennale of Cairo (Egypt) was awarded First Prize by the jury. The next year, her “Tears” project was awarded the prize for the best installation at the First International Biennial of Montijo, Portugal. Accompanied by the publication of a book, her solo exhibition “Echoes”, took place in 2008 at Es Baluard Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Palma (Spain). Martí has participated in many art fairs including Arco, Art Cologne, Bologna Art Fair, Miami, and Art Dubai.
The 400-page monograph “Francesca Martí – Borders of Reality” was published in 2011. Further shows took place at Lipanjepuntin Artecontemporanea (Trieste), Galerie Martina Kaiser (Cologne), Smith & Hall Gallery, (Sydney), Epson Kunstbetrieb (Dusseldorf) and Galleria Il Ponte Contemporanea (Rome). In 2012, her monumental video sculpture “Planet of Fusions”‘ was installed in the central hall at Art Fair Cologne, beginning her long-term collaboration with Gerhardt Braun Gallery (Palma and Madrid, Spain). Martí has been working since 2013 as a guest lecturer in the field of performance at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama in London. The exhibition “Francesca Martí: works from 2000 to 2014” was held at Gallery Pyo in Seoul (Korea) in 2014 as a retrospective of photographs, video installations, paintings, sculptures, and performances from her series “Fly”, “Soul”, “Tears”, and “Scream”.
Her video “Painting the Soul” (2006–2015), with classical dancer Sergio Exposito, was shown during the 56th Biennale di Venezia. She was also one of the five featured artists at the 2nd Brabant Biennale in Tilburg (The Netherlands) and her videos were included in the International Video Art Limousine Festival in New York. Following the installation of her large-scale Marine Rebirth sculpture in Aqaba in Jordan, her “Dreamers” project was published as a 64-page catalogue, with text by Pilar Ribal Simo’.
Her “Migrant Angel” solo show at Galeria Kreisler in Madrid was staged as part of the 2016 Bienal Miradas de Mujeres. The Danubiana Meulensteen Art Museum in Bratislava, Slovakia, hosted “Transformation” (2017), a major retrospective of her work accompanied by a 128-page catalogue. In 2019, her work was featured in solo shows at Reiners Gallery in Marbella (Spain), at DNA Galerie in Berlin, then at MPV Gallery in Den Bosch in the Netherlands. Her outdoor sculptural installation of seven new “Dreamers of Eindhoven” was commissioned for the headquarters of Prodrive Technologies in The Netherlands and her “Copper” performance was staged in 2021 at the Historiska Museet (Swedish Historical Museum) in Stockholm.
Together with renowned Chinese artist Xiao Hui Wang, Martí’s dual exhibition “Dreamers” was launched at the new Xiao Hui Wang Museum in Shanghai in 2022, with a 208-page monograph on Marti’s work produced by the Zhuzhong Art Museum in Beijing, which also purchased a monumental stainless-steel sculpture of “Dreamers” – Altair for its permanent collection. Combining suspended sculptures, multi-track video projections and a soundtrack composed by Zack Hemsey, “Green Swarm” (2022) was organized as an immersive installation in a vaulted space in the Gerhardt Braun Gallery in Palma. In 2023, installations and sculptures by Martí were featured in the “ENERGY” group exhibition at CoolWater, a new multi-purpose cultural centre in a former water-cooling plant in Zwolle, the Netherlands.
The 208-page book “Francesca Marti – Passage and Presence”, written by Mark Gisbourne with contributions from Heike Fuhlbrügge, Alia Lin, Marifé Santiago-Bolaños, Pilar Ribal Simo’, Michael Stoeber, Jonathan Turner and other authors, was published by DCV in Berlin to accompany Marti’s “Flux” exhibition at the Gerhardt Braun Gallery in Madrid in 2023. In 2024, she participated in exhibitions in Spain, Belgium and Türkiye, filmed the “Quondam” video project in La Soledad neighbourhood in Palma and was awarded the XXI Fine Arts Prize by the “Xam” Rotary Club in honour of her artistic career. Exhibitions in Amman, KIAF in Seoul and Copper Transmissions at the Gerhardt Braun Gallery in Palma in 2025, were followed by the completion of the “Resilience” performance, video and installation project with Rohan Marley, based on the themes of heritage, destiny, and shared empathy. This shaped her “Resilience” solo show staged over three floors at the Gerhardt Braun Gallery in Madrid in 2026. Marti’s “PASSAGE” solo exhibition will be held in summer 2026, at the Kunstverein space HAUNT – Centre for Art and Ecologies in Berlin.
For a complete list of solo and group shows: https://www.francescamarti.com/exhibitions/
