Marta Pérez García holds a BFA from Louisiana State University and an MFA from Tyler School of Art and Architecture at Temple University in Philadelphia.
Her work explores the complexities and often chaotic dimensions of the human condition. Through representations of creatures, nature, metaphorical landscapes, and the female body, Pérez García conveys a sense of fragility and resilience that reflects the contradictions of human experience.
Printmaking has long been central to Pérez García’s practice. Working primarily with reduction woodcut, she carves and progressively alters a single woodblock to create layered compositions of remarkable visual density. Her prints are characterized by vibrant color, intricate patterns, and richly detailed imagery that invite close observation and the discovery of smaller elements embedded within the composition.
In recent years, Pérez García’s practice has increasingly focused on gender-based violence. Seeking to bring visibility to an urgent social issue that too often remains hidden or ignored, she creates multimedia and sculptural installations that engage local organizations, communities, and cultural institutions. Through installations, workshops, and participatory projects, her work gives voice, image, and presence to women affected by violence while creating spaces for dialogue, recognition, and collective reflection.
This investigation led Pérez García from the printed surface into sculptural papermaking. Using handmade paper, she creates fragmented female torsos that embody both vulnerability and resilience. Suspended, pierced, stitched, or incorporating materials associated with violence and the body, these faceless figures resist identification with a single individual. Instead, they evoke the many women whose experiences might otherwise remain unseen.
In 2022, Pérez García presented Restos/Traces as part of The Phillips Collection’s Intersections series in Washington, DC. The installation brought together nineteen suspended handmade-paper torsos addressing violence against women and the physical and psychological traces it leaves behind. The work marked an important development in her practice, transforming paper from a surface for the printed image into a sculptural material capable of embodying trauma, memory, resistance, and survival.
Pérez García has continued to expand this body of work through increasingly immersive installations. In 2025, Espacios habitados / Inhabited Spaces, presented at Emmanuel Episcopal Church in Baltimore, brought together fifty suspended torsos within the architecture of the chapel, confronting the growing number of femicides and the institutional and social structures that allow violence against women to persist. Her work has also been presented at the University of Maryland in Bearing Witness, further extending her investigation of the female body as a site of memory, vulnerability, resistance, and testimony.
Earlier projects include Si Te Cojo… Cuerpo, Mujer, Rotura at the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Puerto Rico in 2019 and I’m Gonna Get You… Body, Women, Rupture, presented at the Reeves Center in Washington, DC, in 2018.
Pérez García’s work is held in public collections including the Museo de Arte de Puerto Rico, Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Puerto Rico, the Library of Congress, and The Phillips Collection, among others.
Since 2010, Pérez García has received numerous artist fellowships from the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities. In 2018, she received a Public Art Building Communities Grant for I’m Gonna Get You, a large-scale mixed-media installation addressing gender-based violence. Her exploration of sculptural papermaking was further developed through the 2021 Vita Paper Arts Residency at Pyramid Atlantic Art Center in Hyattsville, Maryland.