In Everything Is Golden, artist Lizzy Martinez reclaims discarded materials to create feminist sculptural interpretations of mythological figures. Her pieces explore both the delicacy and rawness of cement, tiles, ceramic, wood, and metals in their ability to retell long-known stories of Olympian gods and mythical creatures, while reclaiming the female experience and centrality in them.  

Everything Is Golden asks us about the reasons behind survival: how do we decide when an object becomes trash? What are the stories we choose to reproduce and preserve? Is there a bias to how women are portrayed within these stories? The antiquity-like sculptures challenge a broader cultural reverence to a violent past that, although crowded with scenes of abuse and erasure of women, is celebrated as legendary. Just as bold hands hold between their fingers fragments of glass and resin, Martinez’s work envisions new practices of care where marginalized characters are rediscovered from the ruins of history.  

Within this solo exhibition, Martinez displays some of the cornerstones of her studio practice: a trial-and-error method as an ever-evolving artistic process, her enthusiasm for the human body in movement and flesh, and the centrality of gender politics, especially in the discussions of what a woman artist can create and work with. 

Lizzy Martinez

Lizzy Martinez utilizes the figure to engage social advocacy, butting against the perceptions of time and art history focusing on women’s experiences usually guiding them towards unconventional protagonists. Martinez has exhibited at the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, Springfield Museum of Art, Danforth Museum of Art, and the Figge Art Museum. She has shown in both the United States and Ireland and is a two-time St. Louis Regional Arts Commission Awardee, a VCCA Fellow, and a recipient of the Elizabeth Greenshields Award for outstanding work in painting as well as funding from Cerf+, The Andy Warhol Foundation, and The West Collection located in Philadelphia. Creatively benefiting from residencies through the support of the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Vermont Studio Center, Crosstown Arts, Paul Artspace, Craft Alliance Center for Art + Design, and Soaring Gardens Artist Retreat. She teaches drawing and painting at the University of Missouri St. Louis. Using her voice to shine a light on important issues, Martinez has planned exhibitions and art events around topics such as domestic violence, gun control, extreme climate change, endangered species protection, and human trafficking. Her practice expresses complex and difficult ideas that struggle to find adequate attention. lizzymartinez.com