Catalina Martínez Rojas
Semifinalist
Catalina Martínez Rojas (b. 1997, Bogotá, Colombia; l. Providence, RI) is a multidisciplinary artist and designer. Her work has been exhibited at the Sol Koffler Graduate Gallery and the Gelman Gerry Gallery, both Providence, RI; as well as Cachorra Espacio and the Project Room at the University of the Andes, both Bogotá, Colombia. Martínez Rojas is a recipient of the Colfuturo Scholarship and a Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) Graduate Fellowship. Her work was published in the RISD 11th Baker & Whitehill Student Artists’ Book Contest (2025) and her artist book There Is No New Thing Under the Sun (2024) is held in the Special Collections of RISD’s Fleet Library. Martinez Rojas she is currently pursuing an MFA in Printmaking at RISD.
Statement from the Artist:
Catalina Martínez Rojas’ multidisciplinary practice moves between printmaking, ceramics, sculpture, photography and installation. Her work engages with processes of copying, repetition, humor and language, and often reflects on labor, craft and systems of production. The materials she works with create tension: the original objects referenced are utilitarian and sturdy, while their reproduced versions are fragile and functionless. Through this shift, she explores the possibilities of playfulness and collapse, repetition and desire, and how daily life phenomena, when pointed out and replicated, can become art. Martínez Rojas frequently treats language and text as both image and object, using printing and sculptural supports to activate meaning through form. Her work moves between commercial and artistic modes of reproduction, paying attention to gesture, support and the conditions under which images are made, copied, and displayed.