Leslie Martinez

Leslie Martinez creates textured canvases, abstract in gradient multicolour, that explore the similarities between queerness and the South Texas-Mexico border. Their unique use of colour symbolises the power of abstraction in radical imagination, with the texture coming from the artist's zero-waste ethos: the canvas’ surface is created through the use of cast-off materials such as rugs, shirts and bits of previously failed artworks. Such recycling is reminist of life in the borderlands, one of precarity and resourcefulness. Having ancestral ties to the Rio Grande Valley, Martinez frequently travelled across the South Texas-Mexico border: their experience sparked the artist’s continuous investigation of racism and xenophobia present in the questions of belonging and estagement. With inspiration from artists like Helen Frankenthaler and Anselm Kiefer and cultural theorist José Esteban Muñoz, Martinez creates works of queer imagination, anticipating a future where one can be free of societal prejudices and constraints. Written by Goldsmiths CCA